A couple of years back, our guide took a husband and his wife on a hike. The hike takes the group to a couple of waterfalls, where you can jump into the water pools from various rock ledges. At some point, they reached a waterfall where you can jump from a 25 foot ledge. The wife climbed up to the point where the man in the green shorts is standing in the photo below.
When the wife got to that point, she looked down and realized how high the ledge actually was. She began to get a bit worried about the height and whether she could do it. Meanwhile, the husband was standing at the opposite end of the pool, videotaping the wife. The husband began to yell at her to jump and asking her why she was so scared. He began to badger her to jump. At one point, the wife evidently started yelling back and cursing at her husband, telling him to get his tail up there if it was no big deal. Finally, after a few minutes of the husband yelling at his wife to hurry up and jump, she finally did so. Only one problem.......she didn't jump. She simply stepped off the ledge after the guide had specifically instructed her to jump out when she finally decided to go.
The lady proceeded to slide and bounce down the rock wall 25 feet into the water below. The husband began to laugh, amused by the fact that his wife didn't jump correctly. Immediately, the guides knew something went terribly wrong. Blood was filling the pool and the lady was not surfacing. The guides blew their emergency whistles to let other guides in the immediate vicinity know that there was a problem so they could get help as quick as possible. Two of the guides went down into the pool and brought the lady to the surface. She had lost consciousness. Also, the fall down the rock wall had sliced her back completely open from her neck to the base of her back. Bones and muscle tissue were clearly visible. She was bleeding badly.
The guides took her to the highway (about a quarter mile hike) where she was picked up and taken to a hospital. She eventually was treated for her injuries and survived, but she was paralyzed from the waist down because of a broken back. The wife blamed her husband for her injuries. She actually filed for divorce. When it came time for the divorce hearings, the lawyers actually flew two of the guides from Maui to Chicago to be witness at the hearings. The lawyers actually played the video that the husband had took of the incident. The guides detailed what was happening to the court, from the verbal exchanges to the jump to the husband's reaction and finally the rescue, all caught on tape. Needless to say, the husband didn't fare well in the divorce proceedings.
The moral of this story? Never allow a lawyer to ask a stupid question like "What's the craziest thing you've every seen on an outing?" right before you head out on that same outing.
