High Sierra Topix

I'm sorry but the first lesson in life is "don't bet your life on it". The 19 year old bet his he was smarter than the people who posted the signs. The first time I went to Kings Canyon Park, the river was running high and a kid drown the week before. I still remember my Dad was going to tie me to a tree just short of the water so I could fish. I was 11 or 12 and I still remember it. Accidents happen all the time but when you're warned it's on you.

Is is really possible for one to visit Yosemite, from any country, region or cultural/economic environment, and not be aware of its well earned reputation for beauty & life threatening danger? To say it another way, are not Yosemite's magnificent cliffs & stunning waterfalls its very raison d'être?

I grew up in the Bay area, and my dad made a point of taking our family to Yosemite every spring for a few days a week or so before Memorial day. I seem to recall that everyone on the various trails was certainly cognizant that they were literally flirting with death when the creeks, rivers (Merced) & falls were going full blast. A slip here, a fall there, and that's all she wrote. The effect was, we stood well back on the trail.

Fast forward a few decades, and I took my new, city born & bred wife to the Valley. We went up the Nevada trail, and even though she had never been there before, or had any backcountry experience, she had the same reaction: one mistake, and you're done.

Does a person need to be taught to fear spiders & snakes, or be on the alert in the dark? Some things are simply engrained in our psyche as our reward for having ancestors make the "right" decisions millenia/eons ago.

I know that I, a hiker and backpacker who pretty much grew up out there, did not have a clear idea of the force and the danger involved in water until I had a training that specifically told me...

I never went in because I'm a weak swimmer, and I hate the cold. Now I won't go in up to my neck in a river because I know how crazy busy the water rescue team is...

Expecting ignorant people to think it's dangerous when there are others in the water *not* being swept over is expecting a little much - and there are *always* people in the water, sitting on the rocks on the other side of the rail, or dipping their hands/feet into the river... I won't be surprised to find a ranger standing there yelling at people who do this. Or fining them. There's actually a sign up there that warns you that you will pay for rescue if you go in the water and need rescuing. Next step will be fining stupid people who flirt with danger and not reap the consequences, who are modeling bad behavior for the poor souls who spin the roulette wheel and lose...

It really is a roll of the dice - as has been said, we have all done things that could have ended badly. I have lost a camera and destroyed a phone doing them....

Well said WD

Amen, Sparky.

The signs at the tops of the falls really are incredibly explicit. They show drawings of panicked people trying to get out of the water, and as I recall, the statement, "if you go over the falls, you will die." Could it be that kids are exposed to so much death and destruction in all kinds of media (from music videos to video games to the nightly news) that it becomes somehow unreal to them? Nah, probably not.

I would only be able to assign blame to the leader if he/she hadn't warned against swimming or was aware of the swimming and didn't "attempt" to do something about it.

A nineteen year old can read and comprehend. That said, my life would have been pretty boring if I hadn't had taken risks. Some may call the risks stupid. Is free soloing stupid? Is running waterfalls in a kayak stupid? Is iceskating wild lakes stupid? Some would think backpacking where you can be eaten by wild animals stupid!

I don't think kids are anymore isolated from death as they ever were, the young in general don't respect it, it's part of the freedom of youth!

I'm glad I've done the stupid things I've done in my life! I'm guessing we've all done them, some of us are just lucky enough to live to tell the tales....

John Dittli wrote: Some may call the risks stupid. Is free soloing stupid? Is running waterfalls in a kayak stupid? .

Somehow I don't see you taking a kayak over a 600' drop.

Whereas we don't know the full details of this tragedy, I still believe a 19-year-old is ultimately responsible for making the right decisions, particularly when so many signs warn against such behavior. I think our society has shown an increasing tendency to place blame on leaders, or larger entities, for the foolish actions of others.

Another aspect, too, is that there are many of us, even if we know better, will do things that are beyond foolish. Accordingly, whereas I can sit back and say this young person was a fool, so was I at his age, for, as a 19-year-old, I did a whole series of boneheaded things in the High Sierra but was lucky enough to survive. There was no excuse for me: I was a seasoned High Sierra wilderness person by that time, having been hiking in the High Sierra since I was 6, I did well in school, and would eventually become an academic, yet.... I leaped across the notorious Junction Meadow crossing of Bubbs Creek in early May 1979. A slightly bad landing on one of those submerged rocks and I was a goner. On the same trip I took one of those soft-spring-snow falls on the E. Ridge of Mt Brewer and (as is so common with soft steep spring snow) it looked as if I wouldn't be able to self arrest before going over a 500' cliff (fortunately for me the self arrest was successful after what seemed an agonizing long period of the point simply carving a high speed furrow in the snow). The fall was precipitated by my attempting to glissade the headwall on the E. Ridge instead of carefully downclimbing it. Earlier the same year I attempted a solo dayhike climb of Mt. Montgomery from the Benton town dump. Got to about 12900 before I turned around. I was way over my head--it was bitterly cold (standing water frozen in Benton), my snot was frozen Himalayan style, I was following a careful line to avoid stepping on cornices on the (in those winter conditions) dramatic W ridge (pedestrian in other seasons). This was not something I had experience in and I had no business doing it.

Anyhow, my point is that I believe that young adults are responsible for their own actions and we read all the time about young adults making poor decisions. But I whereas I read those things and think to myself that the person was a dumb---, that doesn't mean I forget that I wasn't a dumb---, too. I was just a luckier dumb---. I remember my dad did not chew me out any of the times I told him about my alpine screw ups. He basically shrugged and said that those were risks I assumed when I went up there.

He was old enough to vote!

I initially had the same response as Russ, basically another candidate for a Darwin award. But giantbrookie really nailed it. Then I reflected on my youth and I still get shivers at some of the really stupid things I did, mainly at the steeringwheel of a car. It was only dumb luck that on one or two occasions I did not kill myself or others. But luck was with me and I didn't even have an accident or get stopped by the police. Despite not using drugs or alcohol on a couple of instances I was incredibly reckless. So yes Russ it was pretty stupid but I think that is basically what we are as youth in at least one aspect of our life.

Mike