SAGUARO NATIONAL PARK (WEST)
Saguaros will straight-up murder your ass. Well, not purposely, so I guess technically it's manslaughter. Either way, they have a body count!
In February 1982, an idiot named David Grundman went out to shoot Saguaros with his roommate (also an idiot). After blasting a small one to smithereens, he decided to go for a bigger target, as one does. So he walked over to a 27' tall Saguaro and fired up two slugs from his shotgun at near point-blank range, immediately causing a chunk of the cactus to break off and fall directly on him. The 4' long 500 POUND chunk of cactus absolutely crushed him to death. There are conflicting stories on whether he died instantly or not, but I hope he had just enough time in the tunnel to regret the actions of his stupidity. David was not a good man and David was not a smart man, don't feel bad for him.
Pretty funny if you imagine it as one of those quick cutaway scenes that Wes Anderson does in his films.
Isn't that a great fun-fact though?! And it gives such a good description on how huge these things are. The one David shot was close to 100 years old, and probably weighed a couple thousand pounds. But typically they can live between 150-200 years, grow over 50' tall, and weigh up to 4,800lbs! Needless to say I was flabbergasted seeing them up close, they're MASSIVE.
As for the photos, I think all of these are from the West side of Saguaro National Park. It's really difficult to get a sense of their size without someone in the photo, so I added a pic of me standing next to a big one. There are actually people in both of the zoomed-out photos; they're almost like looking at a Where's Waldo? See if you can spot them!
Oh and I almost forgot to mention the pack of coyotes we ran into one night! I was trying to get some photos of a cactus with the full moon (they weren't good), so me and my fiancée are making our way through dense cholla with sandals on when all of a sudden maybe 3 to 5 coyotes just start yipping and howling from 30 yards away and closing! We kicked our flip-flops into sport mode and got the fuck out of there pronto!
