"The exact spot that held me: 38°40'55.3"N 109°38'45.3"W. If nothing else, let this stand as a reminder to others. Quicksand is real."

"I didn't believe it before today. It does not care how experienced you are. It only cares that you stepped in the wrong place at the wrong time."

From the Reddit post, "I Had to be Rescued off the Hayduke Trail Today in Arches National Park After Getting Stuck in Quicksand."

The story appears at many news sites now, including "Stuck in Quicksand, a Hiker in Utah Has His SOS Answered/Austin Dirks used a Garmin satellite device to reach emergency responders, who rescued him in a remote canyon in Arches National Park" (NYT). That's a free link, and there's some good video there, showing the rescue.

A quote from one of the recipients of the call for help: "We always try not to be judgmental. But you’re thinking, Quicksand, really? It’s probably some tourist with their foot stuck in the mud somewhere."

AND: Dirks shows up the comments section at the NYT:

I'm the hiker who was rescued in this story and Ill give some more context to why I couldn't get out of the quicksand. The advice I heard growing up did not work. People say to spread out, lay back, increase surface area, and swim out. None of that was possible for two major reasons. 

First, my leg was trapped behind me at a bent angle and locked in place like it had been poured in concrete. There was a huge amount of strain on the knee just keeping myself upright. Laying down or twisting would have dislocated my knee or broken something. I tried small movements to break the suction but it wouldn’t budge. 

Second, the air was in the twenties and the water was just above freezing. I’d walked past patches of ice that morning. If I had laid back, I would have soaked myself in the stream flowing over the quicksand. In those temperatures, hypothermia would have beaten the rescue team to me. 

I tried everything I could to shimmy free, but the leg was locked too tightly. Digging with my hands and trekking poles was hopeless because the stream filled the hole faster than I could clear it. By the time you see the drone footage, I’m completely spent from hours of fighting the sand. Nature won the first round. I’m grateful SAR showed up before it claimed the second.