Report on Yosemite Valley today

[Drew Wiley]

It can get pretty sick, macabre. We once hired on ole gal as a cashier who happened to have also been someone who hung around Camp 4 way back in the early
days of its climbing infamy. I stopped a moment to chat with her right when my nephew, who was about 17, walked in the door right after one of his El Cap climbs. He showed us an interesting bone and asked how on earth some animal could have managed to climb way up onto the ledge where he found it. I recognized the skull suture pattern and told him it was no animal. He turned kinda pale at that point. But it got worse. The lil old lady personally knew the person who splattered there. Having climbed the monolith, this guy decided on about a 2000 ft rappel back down, which would have been about ten rope lengths, based on his 200 ft rope. But he never tied off on the end. So that equated to an 1800 ft free-fall with a few messy bounces. In the typical sick humor of the climbing genre, this incident has been repeatedly recited how the individual established a speed descent record of El Capitan which has been equaled but never surpassed. I don't know what happened to the bit of skullcap, but I never saw it again, thank goodness.

[cowanw]

CBC, National Post, BBC all covered it.

[Drew Wiley]

There were three batwing deaths in two months. The incident at Taft Point in Yosemite Valley involved two individuals who might have somehow tripped up each
other mid-flight, since they were attempting a synchronized dive. NG has also done fairly recent TV features on this as well as a magazine article. In the latter case, I believe every individual featured in the story was dead by the time this was actually published. Real bats have had a lot more time to work out the details,
though nobody knows how many millions of them died in the prototyping phase.

[Greg Miller]

CBC, National Post, BBC all covered it.

Yes, it was covered by many media outlets. But 95% of of what gets covered in the media these days get's ignored. I bet if you polled random people on the street, less than 0.1% of them would have any recollection of this. I noticed it because I'm a climber and I'm very aware of his various adventures. The day he died I was explaining to a date the crazy stuff he did and that he probably didn't have much of a life expectancy. Hopefully guys like Alex Honnold will change their minds while there is still time.

[smithdoor]

Try hot today in the upper 90's

Dave

[Drew Wiley]

Greg - here in Calif pretty much anything significant to Yosemite hits the news, and of course Calif dominates news of the West in general, given the financial and political clout of the state, whether people elsewhere like it or not. But we've also heard coverage of the plans to develop the upper end of the Grand Canyon with a tram and huge hotel complex, right down in the canyon at the confluence of the Little Colorado. Hard to imagine anything that abominable is even possible, but some of the tribe are pushing for it. Just goes to show how much that we take for granted as protected really isn't if there is a lapse in vigilance. But people are already up in arms over this, including the Park Service itself. With Yosemite Valley, it's more a risk of becoming an anything-goes three-ring-circus theme park. One more reason to either stick to the high country or visit the Valley off-season.

[Greg Miller]

Greg - here in Calif pretty much anything significant to Yosemite hits the news, and of course Calif dominates news of the West in general, given the financial and political clout of the state, whether people elsewhere like it or not. But we've also heard coverage of the plans to develop the upper end of the Grand Canyon with a tram and huge hotel complex, right down in the canyon at the confluence of the Little Colorado. Hard to imagine anything that abominable is even possible, but some of the tribe are pushing for it. Just goes to show how much that we take for granted as protected really isn't if there is a lapse in vigilance. But people are already up in arms over this, including the Park Service itself. With Yosemite Valley, it's more a risk of becoming an anything-goes three-ring-circus theme park. One more reason to either stick to the high country or visit the Valley off-season.

So you're saying the majority of the 1,675 views of this thread here are in California, and also pay attention to little news bits about wing suit deaths?

[Drew Wiley]

The deaths were covered on virtually every TV channel and got sizable a spread in the SF Chronicle and probably numerous other papers as well. This is a very outdoorsy culture around here, despite the large population. Everyone was talking about it, even in the office. And anything related to core policy in Yosemite attracts attention and controversy, including fringe sports that compromise the definition of a National Park in the eyes of many. I have mixed feelings, since I'm close to numerous climbers, and certainly did foolish things in the mtns in my own youth. But technically, what they did was illegal, and these kinds of things do
often put others at risk. And I must add that there is an element of the climber community, maybe a small element, which is very eco-unfriendly. They leave their trash everywhere, scar the rocks, leave rope burns on delicate features (like Delicate and other arches), and frankly, don't get much sympathy from me. A lot of this is for the sake of showing off on U-tube, so there's a temptation toward increasingly ostentatious stunts. For example, it's not particularly fun to be
walking or photographing near the base of a cliff with someone up there pushing off boulders while some buddy is filming it on his cell phone, or having someone jumping off and encountering who knows what on the way down. There have been plenty of incidents over the years in Yosemite from irresponsible
actions, from those who treat the place as a theme park.

[Greg Miller]

The deaths were covered on virtually every TV channel and got sizable a spread in the SF Chronicle and probably numerous other papers as well. This is a very outdoorsy culture around here, despite the large population. Everyone was talking about it, even in the office. And anything related to core policy in Yosemite attracts attention and controversy, including fringe sports that compromise the definition of a National Park in the eyes of many. I have mixed feelings, since I'm close to numerous climbers, and certainly did foolish things in the mtns in my own youth. But technically, what they did was illegal, and these kinds of things do
often put others at risk. And I must add that there is an element of the climber community, maybe a small element, which is very eco-unfriendly. They leave their trash everywhere, scar the rocks, leave rope burns on delicate features (like Delicate and other arches), and frankly, don't get much sympathy from me. A lot of this is for the sake of showing off on U-tube, so there's a temptation toward increasingly ostentatious stunts. For example, it's not particularly fun to be
walking or photographing near the base of a cliff with someone up there pushing off boulders while some buddy is filming it on his cell phone, or having someone jumping off and encountering who knows what on the way down. There have been plenty of incidents over the years in Yosemite from irresponsible
actions, from those who treat the place as a theme park.

OK. Its obvious that either you don't read what I write, or you purposely choose to reply as if you didn't. Either way, it's impossible to have a meaningful conversation this way.

[Drew Wiley]

I have no idea what you're complaining about, Greg. I'd imagine anything related to this posted on a large format camera forum would comprise about .000001%
of the overall media coverage. These weren't "little news bits anyway". More like the Academy Awards for the Darwin Award. Threads do drift, but so what?