Desert View Watchtower, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona
A visit to the Desert View Watchtower on the eastern portion of the Grand Canyon’s South Rim. Constructed in the 1930s, it offers magnificent canyon views and a tie to the Native American history of the Canyon.
Glad to see you didn’t get too close, PHeymont! The needles on most cholla are barbed, like a fish hook. Very painful and difficult to get out once embedded in your skin.
My local friend, who warned me about them, also told me how to get the barbs out…
I bet your friend said to use “fish nose” plyers. The same kind you use to get a deeply swallowed hook out of a fish.
Or backing into nettles, bare-skinned in an emergency. Ask me how I know.
On a hike once, far from the nearest facilities…well, you get the picture. The trouble with nettles is, unlike cholla, the inflictors of the stings are small and not noticeable if one isn’t familiar with the plant. Despite the painful meeting of nether parts with plant parts, it took another encounter or 2 before I finally got that those innocuous-looking plants were the ones. Cholla, with which I’m also personally familiar, cannot hold a candle in the pain department to nettles.
Always worth trying a little tape or dried Elmer’s glue over the area. Gently pull and hope for the best. What you really do not want to do is sit on the cacti. Ask me how I know.
Or backing into nettles, bare-skinned in an emergency. Ask me how I know.
How do you know?