Killer-Rock
I SAW HIS FACE, OF ANGER, AS HE LOST THE GRIP
So going up he passed me outside the cables, and then suddenly he went down. It was at the ledge, where it gets thinner, and the rock crumbles. That is just why they set up the cable, to pass in relative safety. So he went outside the cables, to pass all of us there as we were waiting. There was some traffic above, and some slower hikers. So he went down.
I saw his face, of anger, as he lost the grip. He first fell backwards, but somewhat in midair he was able to catapult himself back towards the rock, like a miracle of gravity, only to hit his face on the raw rock. Scintillating teeth flew in all directions in the early morning sun, shiny, like ethereal and eternal. A shiny glittery dust of teeth.
Than he went down. He was beating the rock, as he were angry, not really trying to catch a grip. There were no grips. His arm went into a shallow crevice, but it did not stop him: at this point the speed and the weight were too big. The arm just snapped, like a long thin dry spaghetti, with a sound even louder than the smashing of the teeth, like a soft sonic boom of some sort, a bang and a swish, and then a pop, when the absurdly stretched leathery skin of the arm, nearly transparent and pink against the light, snapped.
So he went down. He was now sliding fast towards the precipice, still angry, like a deformed toothless hollow Greek mask of anger and horror, angry at himself and horrified by his own vague and vane stupidity. At the second ledge somehow he did get hold of something, with the arm that was left, the left one, holding on to an elbow of a branch with his left elbow, an awkward and final embrace of two different natures.
So the action suddenly stopped.
Still angry, and now with a somewhat astonished expression, he was staring at us up there as saying “are you not going to do anything?”. We were too far away, and we were petrified, even more stale that the evil rock itself.
He went down. He could not hold the weak elbow-grip at the ledge, with one arm only, and bleeding, bleeding, like a red and golden waterfall: than he kicked, because of pain, or perhaps just anger, or trying to get one leg over the ledge. Futile. Fatal. He was gone.
The silver of the teeth and the gold of the blood had painted the rocks with a trail of infinity.
Nobody said anything.
It felt like the silence of history after the last mastodon disappeared from the planet.
It seemed that even the light wind had died out.
The coarse long shout and the roar of the now dead body had dissipated with a distant echo through the valley.
All was silent.
Then a young girl took a picture with a small digital camera.
***
(COMMENT:
http://news.yahoo.com/600-foot-fall-marks-14th-yosemite-death-232529077.html
600-foot fall marks 14th Yosemite death this year
By TRACIE CONE – Associated Press – 8/2/2011
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, California — A woman slipped to her death Sunday while descending Half Dome in the rain, the latest accident at Yosemite National Park in a year that is breaking records for the deadliest in recent history.
Fourteen people have died so far this year, including three who were swept over Vernal Fall two weeks ago while taking photographs upstream in the Merced River. In 2007, seven people were killed at the park, the most in any recent year until this one.
One factor in the high number of deaths is a record snowfall that has created treacherous snowmelt, swelling streams and rivers at a time of year when nature in Yosemite is supposed to be relatively tranquil.
For Haley LaFlamme, 26, it likely was the unseasonable rain that brewed on the day her group of four secured a rare permit to ascend the enormous, smooth granite dome, the park’s iconic feature. They were among a group of about 20 hikers who were braving the trip to the summit despite the wet conditions, slippery granite and distant lightning and thunder.
The permits limit traffic on the popular 8.5-mile climb. LaFlamme was using the cables that park officials install during the hiking season to help with the steep and sometimes slippery footing up the final pitch of the granite dome.
At about 11 a.m. people in the park began to send messages on Twitter about a raging thunder storm with rain. At noon, Yosemite’s emergency communication center received a 911 call reporting a hiker had fallen at the bottom of the cables, where the granite trail becomes less steep and the cables end. Cobb says LaFlamme fell 600 feet from the shoulder. She was dead at the scene.
Between 2006 and 2010, 38 people died in the park and 1,225 had to be rescued at a cost of more than $3 million. Nearly 4 million people visit the park every year.
Most of those who get themselves in trouble in Yosemite are day hikers who are unprepared for the challenges and changing conditions of the wilderness, according to Search and Rescue records at Yosemite.
By far the single biggest age group of people who get into trouble is young adults ages 20 to 29, records show. The second largest: those over 60.
The allure of the park’s treacherous features combined with a population of tourists more accustomed to Disneyland than the great outdoors can contribute to a false sense of security.
“A lot of people who visit Yosemite aren’t necessarily familiar with nature,” said park spokeswoman Kari Cobb. “They are really out of their element and may not understand the force of nature and what they may encounter in nature.”
“If the trail isn’t closed, people tend to take that as a source of information: Wouldn’t they tell us not to do it if it were dangerous?” said psychologist Paul Price, a professor of psychology at Fresno State.
The last person to fall and die on Half Dome was also from San Ramon. Majoj Kumar died in June 2009. The hikers who witnessed the fall were so frightened that 40 people refused to move and had to be rescued from the dome, Cobb said.
In 2007 Hirofumi Nohara slipped on the cables and died. Two other deaths on Half Dome — Jennifer Bettles in 2007 and Emily Sandal in 2006 — occurred when the cables were down.)
SECOND REPUBLIC
Central Bureau for Information and Statistics
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