Double rock falls at famed Yosemite don’t deter climbers

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK » In the close-knit community of climbers who flock from around the world to cling to the mountainside precipices at Yosemite National Park, climbers were awed but undeterred by successive rock falls that sent tons of granite plunging to the ground, killing one and injuring two over two days.

“It’s kind of an inherently dangerous sport,” Hayden Jamieson, 24, of Mammoth Lakes, California, said Friday, as he prepared to head up the nose of El Capitan early Saturday with his climbing partner.

Jamieson said he feels more at risk of being struck by a car on the street than from a falling slab of granite in the wilderness. But the aftermath of a slab of granite about 12 stories high that shattered to the ground on Wednesday had left a big impression.

“It was totally overwhelming,” he said of the crash and acrid smell of granite dust that lingered in the air. “It’s like witnessing the largest natural event that I’ve ever seen.”

The first slab fell from a peak at the world-class climbing destination El Capitan on Wednesday afternoon, followed by a much larger chunk of granite from the same section of the mountainside Thursday afternoon. Thursday’s crash sent a plume of granite dust throughout the Yosemite Valley, where thousands of tourists flock every year, and closed a main road out of the national park.

Climber Ryan Sheridan, of Buffalo, New York, had been scaling the route for days with a climbing partner when the rock let loose below them Wednesday. He said he and his partner, Peter Zabrok, had slept on the wall in the fall zone a couple of nights before it came crumbling down and he noticed the rock was loose.

Sheridan, 25, said he hammered a pin onto the wall and “when you hit the wall, you could hear echo all around you.”

The duo continued climbing and reached the summit Thursday, after a second rock slide plunged down. After descending Friday, though, he said there are dozens of routes on the massive mountain that unaffected by the slide.

“Those are things you can’t really control, and it’s an inherent risk people who climb take. Freak accidents happen,” Sheridan said.

Still, some climbers acknowledged stress as they weighed whether to take one of 100-some routes up El Capitan or any other big climbs in the park right now, said Josh Edwards, 21, of Bend, Oregon.

“It’s kind of scary thinking that an entire cliff side can come off,” Edwards said. “The general feeling is everybody’s a little scared. At least I am.”