Before Sunrise: A Death on Angels Landing

Angels Landing is an area with sandstone that rises about 1,500 feet above the floor of Zion Canyon in southern Utah.

It is one of the most famous hikes in the American national park system, and it's also one of the most dangerous.

The last half mile of the trail runs along a narrow rock spine with very steep drops on both sides.

Now, in places, the only thing between you and the canyon floor is a chain bolted into the rock that you have to hold on to as you climb.

People love it, and people also die on it.

A study published in 2025 found that at least 17 hikers have died on the Angels Landing Trail over the years.

And the falls keep coming.

A Texas man fell to his death from the chained section of the trail as recently as April of this year.

So when a hiker falls from Angel's Landing, it is a tragedy, of course.

But it's not, on the surface, a mystery.

And that is worth noting because it's the entire reason that this case went the way that it did.

If a healthy young woman falls to her death in a parking lot, well, everyone asks questions.

But if she falls from a trail that is nationally famous for killing people, the location itself answers the question before anyone thinks to ask it.

Angel's Landing came with its own built-in explanation.

The trail has only gotten more famous since 2006.

It's become so crowded and so dangerous that in 2022, the park started requiring a permit just to hike the final stretch.

So you actually have to win a lottery now for the privilege of holding those chains.

In 2006, there was no lottery.

There was just a couple from Las Vegas with headlamps starting up the switchbacks in the dark.

Now, August 22, 2006.

David and Bernadette Vandermeer were a married couple from Las Vegas, and they were in Zion that week to celebrate their wedding anniversary.

They'd been together since they were teenagers.

According to Bernadette's parents, the two of them met at 16 in a church play, and they married at 18 in 1996.

Now that morning, they set out for Angels Landing before dawn.

The affidavit said that the hike began at 4.20, in the morning, and the plan, by David's account, was to watch the sunrise from the summit.