Barefoot woman almost makes it to the top

She clung to the sheer rock face barefoot with no safety ropes or climbing gear in sight. To her left, the enormous stone head of George Washington protruded from the side of the granite mountain. An equally impressive likeness of Thomas Jefferson boxed her in from the right. About 15 feet above her was the top of Mount Rushmore.

National Park Service officials said it was at this point that Alexandria Incontro finally stopped climbing last Friday when she illegally scaled the historic sculpture while visiting the monument in South Dakota with her family, according to federal court documents.

On Monday, the 30year-old from Omaha pleaded guilty to climbing Mount Rushmore, records said. She was fined $1,000 and assessed a $30 fee.

“Ms. Incontro seemed like a nice person who was ‘having a day’ as it were,” her lawyer, Thomas Harmon, told The Washington Post.

A Park Service representative did not respond to a request for comment.

The calls came pouring in shortly after 7 p.m. Friday, according to an incident report. A person had gone beyond the barrier intended to keep visitors away from the sculpture and past the bright orange warning signs, witnesses reported. The woman was starting to scramble up the massive pile of loose rocks at the base of the sculpture.

When a federal officer and park ranger arrived, Incontro was ascending steadily, the report said.

The officer and ranger followed Incontro, trailing behind her as she climbed higher and higher without shoes, gear or safety equipment, the documents said.

By the time the officer got close enough to Incontro to speak with her again, the climber had managed to reach the lofty spot between Washington and Jefferson. The imposing monument that bears the carved faces of four former presidents is near the top of Mount Rushmore, which has an elevation of 5,275 feet.

“From my perspective, she appeared to be on a vertical rock face approximately 15 feet from the top of the sculpture,” the officer wrote in the report.

The pair talked for “several minutes,” before the officer said she was able to convince Incontro to reverse course and come back down the mountain.

Incontro’s risky climb left her with scrapes on her arms and legs and minor injuries to her feet, the report said. She was arrested and charged with climbing the monument, violating a closure or public use limit, trespassing on property not open to the public and failing to obey a lawful order. On Monday, after Incontro pleaded guilty to the climbing crime, prosecutors dismissed the other charges.

The mother, who was at the park with her two young children and more than a dozen family members, is just the latest person to venture past the boundaries at Mount Rushmore. Since the sculpture’s completion in 1941, scores of people ranging from protesters to curious park visitors have tried to get on or near the granite faces.

In the 1970s, American Indian activists occupied the monument at least twice, protesting violations of the Fort Laramie treaties, which left areas west of the Missouri River to the Lakota tribes.

More than a decade later, Mount Rushmore became the site of another protest when members of Greenpeace attempted to display banners over the carvings to call attention to acid rain. Five activists hiked up the back of the sculpture using a trail intended for park mainte- nance but were stopped before they could unfurl the signs, one of which was a gas mask that was meant to go over Washington’s face, the Rapid City Journal reported. According to the Journal, the group became the first people to serve jail time for violating the climbing and trespassing rules. In 2009, Greenpeace activists returned to the monument and successfully hung a banner next to the face of Abraham Lincoln that called for more aggressive action against climate change.

There are at least several incidents each year, park officials said.

Incontro’s trip up the mountain last week, however, appears to stand out from past attempts. In 2018, Don Hart, the chief ranger at Mount Rushmore, told the Capital Journal that he didn’t know of anyone who had climbed the actual rock faces.