The end of climbing in Yosemite?

[Dru]

 

When I pump, it flows.

[JAFO]

I used to live in those tents in employee housing in the back of curry. It was scarry as shit. A week after I moved to a new housing area my tent section was hit with a rockfall and closed off! They should investigate THAT AREA (Glaicer point)

for danger and long term effects. But this should be happening on its own. To sue the park would be a shame. In a similar event when I was working there a person had slipped on the siver apron at the top of vernal falls and died. That area has had this happen several times. If people started sueing then they would probably close that area forever. You take a freaking risk by being in the mountains even just for a picknick a bear could get you. Are we going to sue bears now?

If this hoser wins we could be seriously screwed. Maybe we should write to him to call it off. Either way if he wins and climbing closes he is going to catch shit forever and hate life.

[foraker]

I've seen 30-40 people following a bear through the campground in the middle of the night, popping off camera flashes the whole time. If that bear turns around and mauls someone, is it the park's fault? I mean, after all, the park service knew about the "bear problem"....

[spicoli11]

you mean david lee roth won't have a place to climb????

[Cairns]

I too would be upset if my son's death was attributed to shit-induced mass wasting. Not the most dignified way to go (though better than enumclaw-related trauma)

 

Please don't anyone crap into that convenient crack at the top of the Split Pillar. If you got pasted by an estimated 2500 cubic meters of granite you wouldn't want to have suffered the indignity of the skids being greased by shit. In fact, if indignity is a problem for you, don't go near the Grand Wall.

[Hanger]

I've seen 30-40 people following a bear through the campground in the middle of the night, popping off camera flashes the whole time. If that bear turns around and mauls someone, is it the park's fault? I mean, after all, the park service knew about the "bear problem"....

 

A closer comparison would be the park service leading the bears into the campground.

[faster_than_you]

LA Times Story, may require registration

 

Suit by Climber's Family Dismissed

• A federal judge rules that Yosemite park officials weren't obligated to post warnings at the site of a deadly rockfall.

 

By Eric Bailey, Times Staff Writer

 

A federal judge threw out a $10-million wrongful-death lawsuit brought by the family of a young rock climber killed in a 1999 slide in Yosemite Valley, short-circuiting a legal battle that some climbers feared could threaten a mecca of the sport.

 

In a largely technical decision, the U.S. District Court judge in Fresno ruled last week that Yosemite National Park officials were acting within their discretionary duties when they didn't post warnings at the base of Glacier Point, site of the rockfall that killed 21-year-old Peter Terbush.

 

Terbush, a college student from Colorado on his first trip to Yosemite Valley, was on the ground anchoring a climbing partner's belay rope when a huge granite slab broke loose 1,300 feet up and cartwheeled to earth.

 

As boulders exploded around him, Terbush held tight to the rope, helping save the life of his friend dangling 60 feet up the cliff face. But a fragment struck Terbush in the head, killing him instantly.

 

Park officials declared Terbush a hero after the tragedy, citing his refusal to flee in the face of danger. His family launched a legal fight after learning of a geologist's theory that a leaking bathroom water system atop Glacier Point artificially lubricated the cliff face, unleashing a flurry of rock slides in the months before the tragedy.

 

They argued that the park negligently created the rockfall danger, then failed to warn visitors like Terbush.

 

Park officials argued that rockfalls are an unpredictable part of the natural environment in Yosemite Valley, which was created over eons by glaciers and frequent rockfalls. Litigating the tragedy, they said, was like suing Mother Nature.

 

"We are to this day saddened by this young man's death," said Kristi Kapetan, the assistant U.S. attorney who defended the park. "We just don't feel it's our fault."

 

Dugan Barr, attorney for the Terbush family, said he was disappointed but expected to appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

 

"The thing that's galling about this is it's really clear the park knew about the danger," Barr said, noting that park officials briefly closed off the same area after a slide just weeks before Terbush was killed.

 

In her 55-page opinion dismissing the case, Magistrate Judge Sandra M. Snyder said Barr failed to provide convincing evidence that park managers sidestepped their discretionary decision-making duties by not posting warnings that might have prevented Terbush's death.

 

Snyder noted that decisions by park managers involve balancing the safety of visitors with access to scenic wonders that can pose an inherent danger.

 

In court documents, friends of Terbush said they never would have ventured to Glacier Point had they known of its reputation for rock slides. Since 1860, 44% of the rockfall injuries in Yosemite Valley have occurred at the scenic cliff looming above Curry Village.

 

Soon after Terbush's death, his parents learned of a geologist's controversial theory about the rockfall danger at Glacier Point.

 

Skip Watts, a Radford University professor, went to Yosemite in 1997 to investigate the aftermath of a huge rock slide a year earlier that had killed a man on the ground and injured 14 other people.

 

Preparing to rappel off the cliff face, Watts was surprised by the smell of sewage wafting from leaking pipes at the old bathrooms atop Glacier Point. He theorized that the effluent helped trigger the 1996 rockfall.

 

His curiosity grew as rockfalls occurred in November 1998 and May 1999. Then, on June 13, 1999, the slide that killed Terbush occurred in the same area.

 

Watts believed the culprit was water overflowing from a 300,000-gallon storage tank atop Glacier Point. That water, he concluded, pooled in fractures and put pressure on the rock, acting like a lever that could trigger a slide.

 

The geologist obtained Park Service records that he contends correlate water overflows in 1998, 1999 and 2000 with subsequent rockfalls. When the tank wasn't overflowing, Watts said, the slopes were relatively quiet.

 

Federal officials say they fixed the problem. They have attacked Watts' credentials and findings, saying the science simply doesn't exist to prove or disprove his theory, let alone accurately predict rockfalls.

[Winter]

They've got a tough case to prove. Maybe win maybe lose, but crying about a speculative impact on the sport seems like an over reaction given the suffering that the family has gone through.

 

Ok I'll blow my own horn here. Now everyone quit complaining and let the process work. Sheesh.

[RocNoggin]

I have to admit that I have climbed on GPA since this incident. we took our chances and got away with it, but dont we take our chances everytime we climb? like it was said before, there is so much more water flowing into those cracks from rain and snowmelt than an overflowing holding tank, hard to fault the Park on this one. rockfall is a natural process that we, as climbers, will always have to contend with.

[cman]

Seems like this geologist had some general evidence to support his conclusions but nothing specificly related to this one rockfall incident. Really he just had a theory that may or may not have been true. certainly added water could put additional pressure on the cliff below but how could he know for certain that that is the reason the rocks fell. might it have happened regardless?

 

hopefully this matter will not get overturned on appeal and that climbers, and everyone else, will realize that the outdoors are an uncontrolled place.

[mattp]

As far as I know, there have been very few or no successful suits from somone hurt or injured rock climbing (I don't know of the suit over the Chouinard harness was "successful" or not or whether some settlement agreement was negotiated, and there may have been one or two others). Does anybody know of a case where an injured climber or their surviving family member sued and actually won that suit against another climber, a guide, or gear manufacturer, or land manager?

[catbirdseat]

That infamous Jeff Lowe lawsuit of 2003 was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

[Norman_Clyde]

He moved toward a lawsuit, the father said, after the agency redacted a dozen key documents he hoped would answer questions about what happened. Lawyers told him the only way to see the contents was to file a claim.

 

On first reading, it disgusts me profoundly that this second generation rock climber who introduced his son to climbing at age 9,would sue the NPS to blame them for a rockfall. However, maybe we should take his words at face value: he's not looking for money, or to put a stop to climbing in the Valley. He just wants to know, to borrow a term from political investigations, "What did the NPS know and when did they know it?" But the only way for him to get this information was to file a claim; hence the claim. I wish for everyone's sake that the NPS had been willing to just let him read the memos without filing a lawsuit first. He probably would have been satisfied with some intervention far short of a lawsuit in that case.

[Dru]

maybe cause i am a geoscientist but i kind of come down on the fathers side a bit - if, by pumping sewage into cracks, the nps increased the rockfall rate in Yos above its long term natural level- then they fucked up big time and they should stop, and if it takes a lawsuit to make them stop then so be it.

 

at the level of an individual event though its pretty hard to prove or disprove causation, and anyways when you climb you accept the risks. but this could be likened to someone trundling boulders down on you as you climb a mountain somewhere - rockfall is normal but a boulder trundled at you by a person is not normal risk.

[RocNoggin]

I know that this may be bit if symantics but the NPS didnt PUMP sewage into the cracks. it had a holding tank OVERFLOW. I think there is a big difference between the two, not only liquid volumes but also intent, and I think that is really the key issue here, the NPS didnt intend to have extra fluid in the cracks, it was an accident. and we all know that accidents happen in climbing.

[Dru]

anyways, pump or flow, the net result of increasing pore pressure and decreasing stability is equivalent in either case.

[RocNoggin]

perhaps, but none the less, I still think the major issue regarding fault in a lawsuit is intent.

[Dru]

Negligence would never be a crime then, which is BS.

[Bug]

He moved toward a lawsuit, the father said, after the agency redacted a dozen key documents he hoped would answer questions about what happened. Lawyers told him the only way to see the contents was to file a claim.

 

On first reading, it disgusts me profoundly that this second generation rock climber who introduced his son to climbing at age 9,would sue the NPS to blame them for a rockfall. However, maybe we should take his words at face value: he's not looking for money, or to put a stop to climbing in the Valley. He just wants to know, to borrow a term from political investigations, "What did the NPS know and when did they know it?" But the only way for him to get this information was to file a claim; hence the claim. I wish for everyone's sake that the NPS had been willing to just let him read the memos without filing a lawsuit first. He probably would have been satisfied with some intervention far short of a lawsuit in that case.

 

Dru replied:

"maybe cause i am a geoscientist but i kind of come down on the fathers side a bit - if, by pumping sewage into cracks, the nps increased the rockfall rate in Yos above its long term natural level- then they fucked up big time and they should stop, and if it takes a lawsuit to make them stop then so be it.

 

at the level of an individual event though its pretty hard to prove or disprove causation, and anyways when you climb you accept the risks. but this could be likened to someone trundling boulders down on you as you climb a mountain somewhere - rockfall is normal but a boulder trundled at you by a person is not normal risk. "

 

Having worked against the FS and Park Service, it became obvious that they have a distinct DISDAIN for working with the public on policy issues. They clearly want us to stay out of their hair and will go to great lengths to deny us the information they are obligated to provide under the Freedom of Information Act. They assume an adversarial stance and then wonder why people file law suits. I would take the father at his word.

[archenemy]

Fair enough. But then, how do you get a number like $10 mil.

If you want to see reports, then can't you sue asking to see those reports?

[Bug]

$10mil puts it in the public eye.

We wouldn't have heard about it otherwise and the Park service would be less inclined to settle.

These suits rarely win and this one has little chance.

He most likely accomplished what he wanted by getting the PS to cough up the records and service history in a very public way.

[pale]

Ya but taking $10 million out of the park system is probably a bad thing. Why can't someone sue on principal?

[Bug]

They do all the time.

It never gets reported.