The night before a US woman fell to her death at the Grand Canyon, she posted on social media an image of herself sitting near the edge of a cliff and looking at the stunning view, which sent a chill through her mother.
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Colleen Burns, 35, was on a sunrise hike with two friends along the South Kaibab Trail on Friday when she tried to make way for another hiker and lost her balance, one of the friends, Jessica Roman, said.
Ms Burns, a marketing director from Orlando in Florida, fell backwards off the edge of Ooh Aah Point, a popular lookout where tourists gather to watch the sunrise.
Park rangers found her body on rocks about 120 metres below the lookout.
Ms Burns had uploaded an Instagram photo the night before she died, which showed her sitting on the edge of a cliff at the park.
"That view tho," she captioned the photo.
Ms Roman told local news station WESH that Ms Burns had been trying to make room for another hiker when the accident occurred.
"She was stepping out of the way for another gentleman to kind of squeeze in, and unfortunately, Colleen kind of got tripped up on her own feet and fell backwards. She fell into the canyon," Ms Roman said.
"That was the longest, strangest, craziest two seconds of my life."
Ms Burns' mother, Catherine, told US publication People that she had seen her daughter's last photo on Instagram the night before the accident.
"I saw the last photo she posted before she died, where she is looking at the canyon, and it put a chill through my body because I'm afraid of heights and I was afraid for her," she said.
"I shut down my computer because it freaked me out so much. "And then the next day we lost her."
She told People she had spoken to her daughter on the day she left on her "great adventure" to the Grand Canyon with two friends .
"I always worry about her like a typical mother, so I was asking her questions about her travel and safety and stuff," she said.
"It ended up being a deep conversation. The last thing she said to me was, 'Mum, I'm content in my life … I want to travel and see the world.'
"I was just so proud of her. She was excited about her impact on those who worked for her. She said she had the best job in the world. She thought of the people she managed as her students and friends, not employees."
Ms Burns' father, Jim, urged people to be safe while hiking at the Grand Canyon, but said he did not want his daughter's death to discourage people from enjoying the outdoors.
"She was the type of person who wasn't afraid of anything or to do something new," he said.
"Her thinking was, 'You only have one life and as long as nobody gets hurt, I want to go on adventures.' "She loved sunsets and sunrises. This was just a freak accident."
Ms Burns worked as the regional marketing director for Yelp in Orlando. Yelp officials posted a photo of Ms Burns on Twitter, writing, "There are no words."
Fairfax Media
