A 19-year-old young man, an avid hiker and photographer, is believed to have lost his life after falling while trying to get a better vantage point for a photo on Saturday, and his death should be a warning to hikers, his sister said bereaved.
“Jonathan thought he was invincible. He was so young, so happy and so full of life. Nothing scared him. This kind of thing should never have happened to him. It doesn’t seem right to live in a world without him, and I would give anything to change places with him,” Rebecca Fielding lamented on Facebook on Sunday, according to Utah television station KUTV.
The woman spoke out a day after the death of her brother, Jonathan Fielding, who died Saturday while stopping while hiking to take photos of the view with friends at the Moonscape Overlook.
It was then that the young man would have ventured off the beaten path to try to get a better vantage point for his photos, before falling 300 feet, or more than 90 meters, authorities in the county of Wayne to the American media.
Although his loved ones remained hopeful of finding him alive, rescuers quickly realized that the young man had died when they managed to get to his body.
“No view is worth your life. No view is worth the suffering your loved ones will endure. No view is worth the risk that rescuers face when trying to save people or recover bodies (…) Please don’t make the same mistakes as him,” Rebecca Fielding continued in a second publication.
Along the way, the woman reminded hikers to never rely on the ground at the edge of a cliff, no matter how solid and resistant it may seem.
“It’s still a ticking time bomb that’s eroding. All it takes is one misstep to dislodge the rocks, one moment of imbalance, one trip on a rock, and you can fall to your death,” she continued.
A crowdfunding campaign set up by his relatives to cover the costs linked to his death had reached more than US$26,500 on Friday.
