Salt Lake City Woman Dies After Falling 20 Feet At Grand Canyon

NORTH RIM, AZ — A Salt Lake City woman who worked with the state's water quality division died when she fell about 20 feet during a group river trip at Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.

Margaret Osswald, 34, hiked into the canyon Monday evening to meet a river trip group at Phantom Ranch and was on the sixth day of a multi-day private boating trip, the National Park Service said in a news release. She fell around 6:30 p.m. near Ledges Camp along the Colorado River.

Authorities were told she was unresponsive and members of her group tried to revive her with CPR.

An emergency helicopter was called and parks officials arrived around 8:30 p.m. Osswald died at the scene.

Osswald, a graduate of the University of Utah's S.J. Quinney College of Law, served as an assistant director with the Utah Division of Water Quality, according to her LinkedIn profile.

She reportedly went by Meg.

“We are deeply saddened by this loss, and our thoughts and support go out to her loved ones at this difficult time,” the division told The Salt Lake City Tribune in a statement.

She previously worked as an assistant attorney general in the environment division and briefly as a summer law clerk for the Justice Department's environment and natural resources division. Before that, she worked as a forestry technician at the Utah Department of Natural resources.

Her death comes 11 days after Mary Kelley, 68, of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, died while on a multi-day private boating trip in the Grand Canyon. Kelley was pulled from the Colorado River near the powerful Hance Rapid, considered a highly technical whitewater rapid.