Glendale Woman Falls to Her Death in Grand Canyon

A Glendale woman visiting the Grand Canyon fell 500 feet to her death after climbing off her mule to peer over a steep cliff, authorities and family members said Saturday.

Sheryl Flack, 48, was touring the national park Friday with a small group on a one-day mule ride along the popular Bright Angel Trail, about 80 miles north of Flagstaff, Ariz.

“I don’t know exactly how it happened, or what the circumstances were,” said Flack’s daughter, Christa Deitrick, 31, of Los Angeles. “I don’t know if she was taking a picture or what.”

Authorities found Flack’s body at the base of a steep slope about 30 minutes after she disappeared over a cliff about noon Friday. Officials with the National Park Service and the Coconino County Sheriff’s Department are investigating the incident, which occurred during the tour group’s lunch break.

Flack, a homemaker, Glendale-area volunteer and active member of the First Baptist Church in La Crescenta, was on vacation with her husband of 25 years, Robert Flack. He was not with her at the time of the accident, relatives said.

Because of Robert Flack’s job as an airline official, the couple rarely took extended vacations together, family members said, instead fitting a day or two of leisure into the end of a work-related trip. They had planned to travel to Las Vegas after visiting the canyon.

“This was a real vacation, not a work trip. They had planned it a long time,” Deitrick said. “She was loved by so many.”

Flack is survived by her daughter, her husband, and three adult stepchildren.