Yosemite Rockfalls

[j44ke]

Friend of mine is a rock climber and sent me this thread in a climbing forum about the massive rock fall off the face of El Capitan at Yosemite. Unfortunately, it seems the first fall killed one person and injured a second (a Welsh couple who were climbers) and the second injured two people. But I think things could have been a lot worse, so a lot of people feeling lucky today. Some linked photos and Twitter videos in the thread are well worth following to get a sense of the scale - of both the rock and the luck. I know there are climbers here who might be interested, so I thought I would put this in the OT section.

Massive rockfall - Waterfall route :: SuperTopo Rock Climbing Discussion Topic

[spopepro]

Been following this. Rocks fall a lot in the valley, but ones this big are somewhat rare. It's a really good thing that a small bit let go earlier in the week (not great for our Welsh friends of course) and cleared everyone out of the area. It sounds like some of the talus made it to the river, which is not close by. It's hard to wrap my head around 1300 tons of granite.

We are headed up there in 3 weeks. Plans are the sunnyside bench regular route (and a swim in the pools above lower yosemite falls) and either after six or the grack. It's always a little tough to commit to the grack because the area is know to be more active than many with rockfall. This really makes me think...

Also: one only needs to spend about 45 seconds in a supertopo thread before realizing what a good group of people we have here...

[spopepro]

Er... I'm now hearing estimates of 7000 tons. Not that any of those numbers seem to mean anything at all to me... they are all just to big to comprehend. This account is nutty:

[ides1056]

I've been wondering what effect myriad pitons hammered into the rock might have.

[spopepro]

I've been wondering what effect myriad pitons hammered into the rock might have.

In truth? None. The rock is huge, pitons soft, and placing any gear (fixed or free) into anything but completely solid rock is incredibly dangerous, so people don't. This piece was coming down no matter what. All that said... I always note that climbing is not a "leave no trace" activity, even if free and clean aid is often leave very, very little trace. There are scars all over the valley and beyond from iron being pounded, blocks pulled by accident or intentionally for safety... and I understand not everyone is on board. I'm not comfortable hammering, but I'm OK clipping bolts myself... which I suppose is a little hypocritical.

This two routes (er, the two most famous, there are more routes than one can count going up el cap) that were wiped out were called "The Waterfall Route" and "Chinese Water Torture" because whenever there's rain or snowmelt a whole bunch of water comes down that face. That's a big part of what brings rocks down. The talus field below the east buttress was already big, now it is bigger.

In any case, the final tally from the NPS is 10250 cubic meters of rock weighing 30500 tons. Amazingly, that only makes it the 29th largest known rockfall event in the valley.