#Quicksand on the trail Patch
#Quicksand on the trail free

So I pulled my hands into my jacket sleeves, which were basically frozen, and grabbed the stick, which was still stuck in the ground, and pulled myself up. Sitting in the water, I tried to get up but couldn’t. I figured if they were bringing a helicopter to pull me out, it would have been there by now. It had been about five hours since Jess left, and it was getting dark. I don’t know how long I was asleep, but I woke up falling backwards into the water. I pulled my head back into my jacket and fell asleep. It started snowing again and didn’t seem like it was going to stop. Then the skies cleared up, and it was actually kind of nice for a couple hours. When I pulled my head up out of my jacket, there was close to an inch of snow on top of me. The stick had a Y shape at the end that I was able to rest on. I pulled my beanie over my face and zipped my jacket all the way up so I could pull my head inside. I was wearing a big jacket that would keep me warm for a while. That’s when I thought that I probably was not going to make it out of here. I told her she had to leave. I didn’t know what would happen, but I didn’t want to think that she wouldn’t be able to get out.Ībout a half-hour after she left, it started snowing like crazy. And I knew no one would ever come across us until the next person hiked the canyon, and who knows when that would have been. I was not going to be able to get out of the sand. I told her she had to stop she was wasting her energy. She started scooping sand with both hands, but it was refilling faster than she could pull it out. She got another stick, and I tried to wiggle and pull my leg, but nothing was moving at all. I couldn’t even stand to get leverage to pull on it. Jess gave me the stick. The ground that sunk was just a tiny area around me, but I couldn’t move my right leg at all.

#Quicksand on the trail free

It was also up to my left calf, and I was able to free it. When Jessika got to shore, my right leg sank all the way to my thigh. I didn’t pay attention to what was going on I figured I’d just pull it out. I got her by the shoulders and pulled her out.

I told her to stop moving and not to freak out, and then I went to help. Then she fell forward, and both legs started to sink. Less than five feet from the edge, Jessika’s front foot sunk. About five miles in, we had to walk through a pond. At the beginning of the hike, we found a stick that was about six feet long and took it with us to poke into the ground whenever we crossed water to make sure it was okay to step there.Īs we hiked, snow started lightly sprinkling off and on. And the weather was sunny when we started. We’d hiked in Zion before this, but not the Subway. I figured it would be a long day-five hours in, five hours out. As a winter storm moved in, McNeill had to make a desperate hike out of the canyon to find help while Osmun tried to stay alive, stuck in an icy riverbed as more and more snow fell.

#Quicksand on the trail Patch

Well into their trip, Osmun stepped in a tiny patch of quicksand that completely swallowed his leg. Last Valentine’s Day, Ryan Osmun, a 34-year-old from Mesa, Arizona, and his girlfriend, Jessika McNeill, decided to hike the Subway, a remote, semi-technical slot canyon trail in Utah’s Zion National Park.