FAST AND FURIOUS
Record winter snowpack is undergoing a late-spring melt off in Yosemite National Park, turning summer swimming holes into potential death traps
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK — The Merced has no mercy.
Not now, when a frothy, white torrent of water charges out of Yosemite’s glacially sculpted rock walls like rampaging elephants.
Not after record snowpack undergoes a late-spring melt off that has turned favorite summer swimming holes into potential death traps, leading Yosemite National Park rangers to launch a campaign to keep people away from the water’s edge.
“It’s essentially a freight train barreling down the riverbed,” said Moose Mutlow, swiftwater coordinator for Yosemite Search and Rescue. “If you step in front of it, it is going to take you with it.”
The season’s first major incident unfolded Monday when a man described in his 20s fell into the boulder-strewn Merced River while hiking on the steep and slick Mist Trail. Rangers were searching for the body.
Officials have reported 16 drownings in the park since 2007, including four last year when rivers and streams were running at a fraction of the current rate. Mutlow, of Yosemite West, expects emergency crews to experience a busy summer as
temperatures rise and the Merced looks inviting to uninitiated guests.
Yosemite crews face safety issues shared throughout the West when rivers swell after wet winters. The deadly conditions of a “big-water season” already are taking a toll as summer vacation season gets underway.
Three people died and 24 were rescued in multiple incidents over Memorial Day weekend along the Kern River, one of the state’s deadliest stretches of water. Ten people have died in rivers in Kern and Tulare counties this year, according to news reports.
Three others drowned on Memorial Day in the Provo River in Utah when a 4-yearold girl fell from a rock and her mother and a bystander jumped in to try to save her.
As Yosemite’s annual visits swelled past 5 million people, so have the number of search and rescue operations. Crews responded 329 times last year for an 82 percent increase since 2014.
Rangers keep a running account of Yosemite’s missing persons, providing an unequivocal reminder of the hazards of this harsh landscape that can seem so benign.
Officials try to minimize the risk by closing the Merced to recreational activities when the river rises above the 7-foot mark at the Pohono Bridge. A park spokeswoman couldn’t predict when the river would open this summer.
But once the runoff slows and the river depth decreases tourists won’t hesitate to swim, raft, canoe and kayak the water that cuts through the heart of Yosemite Valley.
“It’s guaranteed things will go wrong even if the river is — quote — closed,” said Michael Ghiglieri, coauthor of “Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite.”
Ghiglieri, a veteran wilderness river guide with a doctoral degree in wildlife ecology from UC Davis, said many people “do not understand what water does because they are used to swimming pools and small lakes.”
An entry in a Yosemite Search and Rescue blog from last year emphasizes the point:
“A 60-year-old male unties his inflatable raft from a group of other rafts. Although he recently inflated his raft, it is now roughly half deflated which affects its buoyancy and maneuverability. He misses the takeout point, ditches his raft, and tries to swim to shore. He is not wearing a PFD (life jacket). He is able to grab a buoy and a companion is briefly able to assist him. When he tries to stand, the combination of poor footing and strong current carries him downstream and he disappears. An active search is underway as of this writing.”
The deadly mix of cold and fast water
It’s easy to imagine a life-altering episode while standing on a footbridge at Happy Isles in the eastern end of Yosemite Valley as a misty film of water swirls in the hard afternoon light. The roiling Merced looks and sounds intimidating as it splashes its way to the San Joaquin River.
The problem, it seems: Visitors don’t always listen to their inner voice of caution.
Ghiglieri, who also coauthored “Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon,” said it’s practically a cliche that people jump in without thinking. This is particularly true as the Valley heats up and the Merced meanders past crowded campgrounds where the rocky banks provide beach-like settings.
Guests want to cool off after hikes, bike rides and other physical activity. Yet, the river’s average temperature in early summer is dangerously cold — from 42 degrees to 50 degrees. A park spokeswoman said the river currently is running at 3,600 cubic feet per second, or three school buses of freezing water bombing downriver by the second.
The mixture can be fatal for even strong swimmers because it is difficult to make practical decisions in freezing water.
“If you fall in, the first thing you should say to yourself is, ‘I am going to survive,’” says Mutlow, a longtime staff member at environmental education institute Nature-Bridge.
Then, he said, get your head above water. The safest position is to lie on your back with feet pointing downstream. The feet and butt can act as little bumpers to push away from rocks and boulders lying across the riverbed.
Mutlow, 52, said people must locate an exit point and then aggressively swim to the bank. It’s important to get out quickly because cold water accelerates the rate of hypothermia.
Ghiglieri and his co-authors wrote the Grand Canyon and Yosemite books with hopes of preventing more tragedies. After reviewing fatality incident reports, they concluded almost all were avoidable.
“They weren’t acts of God,” Ghiglieri said. “They were acts of human erroneous thinking, negligent behavior or arrogance.”
The Grand Canyon river guide isn’t sure national parks can do more than post warning signs at natural entry points on hazardous waterways.
“You can’t patrol the whole river,” he said a day after being medically evacuated from the Grand Canyon with a knee injury.
An act of retrieval
From its headwaters, 81 miles of the Merced flow within Yosemite park boundaries, making rescues almost miraculous due to the amount of territory to cover. As a result, crews expend most of their energy on the morbid act of body recovery, whether racing up the muscle-aching granite steps of the famous Mist Trail or combing the Merced’s depths for missing persons.
Breathtaking granite monoliths rise out of the Valley to create a risky haven for rock climbers who continually push boundaries of sanity. But drownings — and not grisly free falls from sheer, jagged rocks — comprise most of the park’s 12 to 15 annual fatalities.
Mutlow once responded to an emergency at the bottom of Bridalveil Falls on the western side of Yosemite Valley.
“I went up there and watched a young man die,” he said. “All people are trying to do is have a good time. It shouldn’t be about dying.”
Mutlow gets chills when recounting such incidences. The British wilderness expert has served as a family liaison in an effort to help loved ones come to terms with an unfathomable ordeal.
“The water has robbed that person of all dignity,” he said of stripping away a victim’s clothes. “It’s naked exposure to the world. When you have a bank recovery and you are gently manhandling them into the bag and zipping it up — that’s different than having to pluck them from the grip of the river.”
In the age of knee-jerk opinion, Mutlow reminds people that every victim is somebody who has left behind grieving families.
“The noise a mother makes when they know they’ve lost a child, it is beyond haunting,” he said.
It’s a cry Mutlow has heard too many times along this stretch of raging water.