“Generally the climbers are not on El Cap this time of year,” he said. Gediman said Thursday that no climbers were on El Capitan at the time of the latest rock slide. Terbush was hailed as a hero after the tragedy for holding onto the rope as the rocks cascaded around him, saving the life of his friend who was dangling 60 feet off the ground above. In 1999, a 21-year-old rock climber, Peter Terbush, a college student from Colorado, was killed when a large granite slab broke off Glacier Point’s rock walls, hitting him as he stood on the ground anchoring a climbing partner’s belay rope. After a rock slide near Glacier Point injured three visitors in 2008, park officials moved some cabins at Curry Village. More have died by drownings, car accidents and other causes.īut rock falls have caused damage and drawn international attention over the years. After the glaciers that carved Yosemite Valley retreated about 15,000 years ago, rock falls - sometimes triggered by changes in temperature, or earthquakes, water or other factors - have been a major force reshaping Yosemite Valley.Ībout 17 people have been killed in Yosemite by rockfalls over the past 150 years. Rockfalls are a natural part of Yosemite’s relentlessly changing geology. “Holy God!” a man can be heard saying in the background of Piper’s video Videos of Monday’s rock fall were captured by at least two park visitors, James Piper, a Novato photographer, and Alex Wood, an artist from England. An estimated 185 tons of boulders hit the Dodge Ram truck they were sitting in, sending it off the road into the Merced River embankment.Īvalanche! Crazy seeing giant piece of El Capitan fall at #yosemite #yosemitenationalpark #rock #Avalanche #elcapitan /9fVgQmDXvS 27, a San Jose couple, Georgios Theocharous, 51, and his wife Ming Yan, 35, were killed when a rockslide occurred half a mile from park’s Arch Rock Entrance along Highway 140. Those killed Welsh athlete Andrew Foster, 32, severely injured his 28-year-old wife, Lucy, and sent rocks smashing through the sunroof of an SUV driven by Florida tourist Jim Evans, causing major injuries. Monday’s rock slide was a reminder of two slides that occurred nearby on El Capitan in September 2017. “It might be a few small rocks, or a significant one. “There are rock falls every day here,” Gediman said. That’s roughly the equivalent of 100 to 200 dump trucks full, an amount which likely weighed hundreds of tons. The slide released about 1,000 to 2,000 cubic yards of rock, Gediman said.
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