Know Before You Go—The Time I Touched a Deadly Flower

I’ve made dumb mistakes in the outdoors

In 2018, when I was offered an internship at Capitol Reef National Park, one of the things I was most excited about was to work in the heart of canyoneering country. I had never gone canyoneering and really wanted to try the sport before I moved out of Utah.

Shortly before moving to southern Utah, the local outdoor store hosted a free canyoneering workshop that Jessica, my wife, and I attended. Recently, we had both got into rock climbing and I figured we would be able to quickly pick up canyoneering. 

It only took sitting through one 45-minute workshop for us to fully realize that we didn’t have a clue of what canyoneering would entail and that we should definitely not go unless we were with someone experienced. I still cringe at my naivety leading up to that workshop.

Fortunately, I got informed before I tried something potentially deadly. Unfortunately, I haven’t always been that wise. My ill-informed adventures have ranged from mild mistakes like wearing sandals to the 42°F/5.6°C Ape Cave, to potentially life-threatening mistakes like snowboarding Teton Pass without any clue about backcountry snowboarding. With a little bit of research, both of those misadventures would have easily been avoided.

Canyoneering in Capitol Reef

Despite my initial ignorance, during my time at Capitol Reef, I was able to go canyoneering several times with people that really knew what they were doing. It was on one of these outings that our canyoneering group rubbed our hands all over a toxic plant.

One evening four of us set out to descend a short canyon that one of the group members pioneered. Of the four of us, two were experienced in canyoneering (one went almost every day after work), one was a biologist, and all were experienced in the outdoors.

Hiking to the canyon we entertained ourselves with exploring a cave we found and listing the common and scientific names of plants we passed. I wasn’t good at this last part. 

The views from the top of the canyon were stunning, it was an amazing evening, and the whole canyon was a wonderful experience.

The canyon was, overall, a pretty simple canyon and the most dangerous thing we encountered were two Midget Faded Rattlesnakes, which are fortunately very docile. Even when you almost crawl into them.

One of the neatest experiences of the trip was repelling down a 20-foot drop using a water anchor, an advanced ghosting technique. This is where our toxic plant comes in.

Sacred Datura

Growing under this drop in a nice shaded and moist area was a large-leafed flowing plant. None of us (biologists included) had ever seen this desert plant before. So what did we do? We started rubbing the leaves and commenting on how it smelled sort of nutty. Thankfully, we all had our canyoneering gloves on.

Later that night our biologist friend sent us all a message letting us know the plant was the deadly Datura wrightii, or Sacred Datura, a plant which swcoloradowildflowers.com describes as containing “numerous poisonous alkaloids including atropine, hyoscyamine, and hyoscine [which] every year… produce a number of deaths in the United States.”

Now, to be fair, we weren’t eating it, and just touching it likely wouldn’t make us ill, die, or go temporarily blind. But that’s not the sort of thing I like to make bets on. And, I’m also chagrined to say, that years ago I once ate something that I was “pretty sure” was honeysuckle. Luckily it was, but the experience still frightens me. So I’ve had a history of just eating things I’ve found.

The point though is that you shouldn’t eat or touch things when you don’t know what they are. I was with experienced outdoorsmen, people who had lived in the desert for years, and a biologist. And we still rubbed our (gloved) hands all over a plant responsible for many deaths.

Know before you go

It’s impossible to know everything. I still don’t know all of the dangerous plants in the desert. But the more we know, the better off we will be. 

This applies to all areas of the outdoors. Know where you will be able to refill on water. Call and ask about river crossing depths. Know what rain patterns are in the area. We live with all of this information only a few clicks away, and it saves lives.

And in the meantime, we probably shouldn’t go rubbing our hands over unknown plants, and—as frustrating as it may be for me at times—not eat things we “think” are edible.

Personally, I need a plant book.

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Do you have an experience where you were glad you were prepared or should have known more before you went into the wilderness? Let us know in the comments, share your story on Instagram, or send us an email. We would love to hear about it.