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An experienced hiker who became trapped in quicksand for hours at a famed national park in Utah on Sunday described the ordeal as “the closest I’ve ever come to dying.”
Austin Dirks, who has logged thousands of miles on hiking trails, told FOX13 Salt Lake City that he was trekking through the upper end of Courthouse Wash in Arches National Park just before sunrise when his left leg suddenly sank into what he thought was solid ground.
“I was able to pull it out, and then I shifted all my weight to my right foot,” Dirks said. “And I sunk up to the knee. It felt like I had stepped into concrete, and then it hardened around my leg. I couldn’t even move it a millimeter.”
Dirks used a GPS satellite messenger to alert authorities to his exact location.
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The toughest part of the ordeal, however, was waiting for their arrival.
Dirks said he persisted through 20-degree temperatures while stuck at a 45-degree angle for two hours until he saw a rescue drone fly overhead.
Drone video captured rescuers arriving in the canyon and working to free Dirks.
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“I realized that that’s the closest I’ve ever come to dying,” Dirks told the outlet. “I owe them my life.”
Dirks noted that before the ordeal, he had thought of quicksand as “more of a folklore or a legend” found in movies.
Real quicksand is very different from the dramatic portrayals of Hollywood. Quicksand is a muddy mixture of sand, water and sometimes clay that forms from rising groundwater. While the sand won’t support much weight, humans are too buoyant to sink completely beneath the sand.
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“How it’s depicted on TV is nothing like it is in real life,” Dirks said. “The human body is more buoyant than the quicksand, so you’ll never sink to above your head.”
Experts say that leaning back in the quicksand can help distribute your weight and help relieve the pressure around your legs.
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