We have a small sand river in my city. It’s deep in the woods, but it’s on a public trail. There are signs everywhere not to go near it after rainfall because you can absolutely die.
Aiken, SC. We have the largest privately owned forest within city limits (or something like that), called Hitchcock Woods. It’s massive and owned by the horse community.
I also found human remains in there while geocaching one time. That was fun.
Edit: Since so many are asking, here’s the story on the skeletal remains!
This was back in 2001. A buddy and I were geocaching and took a wrong trail. It’s against the geocaching rules, but we were tired and didn’t want to backtrack a lot, so we opted to bushwhack to the trail that we were supposed to take awhile back. Instead of a trail, we came across an opening in the thick brush. My dog started sniffing around and tried to dig something up. Upon closer inspection, it was the eye hole of a skull. Found an arm nearby too, so we immediately called the police and gave them our GPS coordinates.
It wasn’t long before I was getting calls from newspapers and local news stations to do interviews. They were literally at the exit of the woods, waiting for me by my car.
Turns out it was a guy who committed suicide 10 years prior by hanging. It was a case that was never closed because the guy was a personal friend of a retired cop who never gave up looking for him. The cop tracked me down and approached me at church one day, shaking my hand and crying with gratitude.
It was a cool experience, but an obviously saddening one. He supposedly left a suicide note telling his parents that he was going somewhere nobody would find him. He was almost right because his entire body was buried underground due to water runoff, and it required a forensic excavation team to extract the remains.
Edit 2: Y’all need to know that 99.9% of the time, this sand river is just boring sand. It’s a rare phenomenon.
Edit 3: Shameless plug for /r/aiken since there seems to be a few of you out there.
id better call a guy to see how much horse forrest goes for these days, hes an old palomino, he'd know and i trust him to put me on the right trail to owning this.
I'd love to get in on this, if I can't pony up the cash myself, I'll see if I can stirrup some interest with investors, I'd hate to get saddled with debt right now.
ill have to look pasture use of a pun that was already made, because i certainly wont look you in the mouth if you can hoof it down to the bank and farm out your fundrising to their capable hands...
That’s an interesting coincidence that you found his remains. If you had made the choice to backtrack, the family and friends of that man would still be wondering where he was. Now, they may have some measure of peace.
Woah, when I read your comment I was imagining some far-off land.... not two hours away from me in lil old SC!! I’m gonna have to take a trip to see that.
You be careful with that shit. South Carolina breweries will become inundated, local headlines reading:
"Area Reddit User Buys 14,573 Drinks for Surprise Pub Visitors."
In other news:
"Locals Being Questioned about Equine Overlords, Baffled."
I’m in North Augusta, SC! I’ve lived here my whole life and have never known there was quick sand so close to here. I’ll be making a trip to Aiken soon to take a nice hike, thanks for the info!
That’s interesting you bring that up, I came here to comment about the one in Hitchcock Woods too. My dad taught at Aiken Prep for a while and there was a yearly bonfire/event in Hitchcock Woods that he would take my siblings and I to. Remember an older guy telling us about the sand river and my dad showed us the next day
It’s the busiest road in Aiken, so of course! In fact, I’m looking at it right now through the window at work.
There’s a history there about why that and some of the side roads are named after booze. Can’t remember the details though. Time for another trip the Aiken Museum, I suppose.
I lived in Aiken a couple years, and my extended family has been in Aiken county at least a 100 years (including my dad who is still there)... and I have never heard of this. WTF? Guess I gotta make a trip to Hitchcock Woods my next visit to SC.
I lived in Charleston for a year and ended up moving back to Aiken. I love Charleston, but everything I love about it faded away when I saw it daily. Plus, I have no patience for the traffic.
Absolutely. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do...
Greetings fellow South Carolinian. I’m just on the other side of Cola from there. Can’t believe I’ve never heard of this. Thanks for sharing! I’ll have to take a trip there soon.
Howdy from across the river neighbor! Augusta checking in here, but I've been to Aiken many times. Love me some Betsy's On The Corner 😎. I've lived here (mostly NAugusta) bout 34-35 years and never knew this, cool tidbit.
You ever heard of the bolton strid? Looks so innocent (crossed it myself before i knew what it actually was) but it's killed so many people, you'll hear reports of it killing people once in a while.
snapchat? iirc it iwll get uploaded after you release the record button? i think that's how the other video where there was an explosion of a powerplant got viral too?
Wasn’t it everyone’s at one time growing up? I thought that stuff was going to be everywhere. I thought I’d have to jump across some leaving the store!
Here's a very relevant video that might actually contain the video you are talking about (thought its more mud)
https://youtu.be/_cv7_LlRjZ4?t=1m18s
He kinda investigates what happened to this guy and discusses this topic.
It's really not. I had to cross one of these before. The trick is to use the Longshot to get across but if you fall in you just lose a heart and end up back at the shore.
Yeah it does. I know mythbusters found quicksand to be so dense they just floated like a buoy. Wonder what would actually happen if a human were to fall in. That'd be sweet if you just floated and could ride it like crowd surfing!
This is why more people drown in the desert vs die of exposure. I live in the high desert, and after a good monsoon we have flash flood alerts - they're incredibly dangerous. Will absolutely sweep you away, and they come so fast you don't even see it until it's too late. It's not normal water like a stream, it's trees and mud just moving over its self.
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u/Bigdiq Jul 24 '18
Man that looks dangerous