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Charlie tree
Trad climber
los altos
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Topic Author's Original Post - Nov 11, 2010 - 02:23am PT
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Does it seem slightly scary standing at the base over there? Are the bolts still good on the route? The last few years I've been avoiding the area because of rock fall.
15 years ago I almost got nailed by a small avalanche, in the gully to the right of Glacier Point. It was early in the year. We were hiking up a gully on the way to the base. Suddenly, tons of snow and rock fell from half way up the cliff, and landed right where we would be standing in another 5 minutes. good timing.
standing at the base of Green Dragon, all the recent rock scars have to give some thought. I miss doing the Green Dragon, Mr. Natural link up, and think, I must go back.
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enjoimx
Trad climber
SLO Cal
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Nov 11, 2010 - 02:41am PT
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Climb it only once a year. No more.
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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Nov 11, 2010 - 02:48am PT
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I haven't done Green Dragon in a long time, but Roger replaced the bolts on it in summer 2009. I have done Mr. Natural a few times in recent years, but I always use the easy approach on the left. Jared and I replaced one of the anchor bolts on Mr. Natural on one of those trips, and Roger got the other one.
I think the big rockfall over there hit the talus slope below Punch Bowl and then rolled down along the base.
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Charlie tree
Trad climber
los altos
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 11, 2010 - 03:01am PT
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I can't believe you go around Clint. I know you're more solid than I am. The link up is so fun. Good to know about the bolts.
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phylp
Trad climber
Millbrae, CA
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Nov 11, 2010 - 01:20pm PT
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Charlie tree - Dr. Feel Good is also a nice link up with Mr. Natural, since they are both gear routes. After the so, so very thin crack of Dr. feel Good, Mr. Natural feels even better. Have you done it that way? The last time I climbed in that area was the day before that poor guy was killed by the rock fall. That's a long time ago now. It spooks me to think about going back there.
Phyl
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Charlie tree
Trad climber
los altos
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Topic Author's Reply - Nov 12, 2010 - 01:36am PT
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I top roped Dr. Feelgood a very long time ago. It does sound like something fun to do. sounds like timing was good for you, too.
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couchmaster
climber
pdx
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Nov 12, 2010 - 03:45pm PT
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Dr Feelgood to Mr Natural is my favorite GP line. Maybe one of my favs in the valley after Serenity/Sons. I've walked over there twice the last 2 times down to look and been unable to commit to it ever since the rockfall fatality. Those rocks on the ground.....whew...big stuff, freshly fractured and no lichen.
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
SoCal
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Nov 12, 2010 - 03:56pm PT
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Beautiful climbing on GP but it's inviting bad luck out on a date to climb there.
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mareko
Trad climber
San Francisco
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Nov 12, 2010 - 04:47pm PT
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I climbed it twice this past season, great line
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Brock
Trad climber
RENO, NV
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Nov 12, 2010 - 09:53pm PT
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Climbed it one week before the major rock slide that killed/beheaded a climber. We noticed alot of fresh rockfall and fine white granite powder on the surrounding area the week before the fall. GUess I have been to scared to venture back on the Apron area since then. Mr Natural was one of the BEST finger cracks I have ever climbed.
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BASE104
climber
An Oil Field
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Nov 12, 2010 - 09:59pm PT
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Yeah, I did Green Dragon to Mr. Natural only once, circa 1980.
Really fun climbing. You could do a zillion routes on the Apron and not get too tired.
If it was in Chamonix, rockfall wouldn't scare too many people off. You can get whacked by rockfall damn near anywhere at any time.
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Hummerchine
Trad climber
East Wenatchee, WA
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Nov 12, 2010 - 10:01pm PT
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I have not climbed Green Dragon to Mr. Natural in about a zillion years, but I used to consider it to be the best two pitch climb I'd ever done. Probably still up there too...glad to hear about the new bolts!
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karodrinker
Trad climber
San Jose, CA
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May 31, 2012 - 01:28am PT
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Just did the first pitch of green dragon a couple days ago. Bitchin bad ass route! Hardest slab route I've climbed yet, was proud to get to the anchors.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 31, 2012 - 01:55am PT
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why not Apron Jam to Mr. Natural?
(I actually tried it once and sort of ran out of steam...)
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ß Î Ø T Ç H
Boulder climber
bouldering
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May 31, 2012 - 01:57am PT
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"On a cool June evening in 1999, Peter Terbush belayed his friend Kerry Pyle on the Apron Jam (5.9), a common approach to the classic 5.10+ Mr. Natural on Glacier Point Apron, Yosemite. Joseph Kewin waited nearby. Suddenly, in a roaring cloud, 150 to 200 tons of granite sheared off above. Pyle hurriedly tried to place pro, Kewin instinctively took cover (a boulder landed where he had been sitting, pinning the sweater he had left behind), and Terbush, as instinctively, held the belay. When the young men began calling to each other through the dust, Kewin found that Terbush had been killed instantly by shrapnel. His left hand was still on the rope above and his right locked in the brake position across his hip. He was 21.
His death was a terrible tragedy. Yet I was dismayed when the Terbush family filed a $10-million wrongful-death lawsuit against the National Park Service. The family has contended that negligence in the NPS’s “design, construction, operation, and maintenance” of the wastewater management system on top of Glacier Point Apron exacerbated natural exfoliation, and that the NPS should have posted warnings.
I was climbing on the Apron, just down the hill on Anchors Away, the week before. Climbers knew the history and risk of rockfall at the Apron, and Peter had been in the Valley long enough to have climbed major routes. Three weeks earlier, rockfall had temporarily closed the Apron and the Curry Village Campground; in November, rockfall had caused evacuation of 500 people in Curry Village; and in 1996, the air blast from an 80,000-ton slide near the Happy Isles Nature Center snapped 1,000 trees, killing one and injuring several. A “duty to warn” issue seemed both specious and disturbing in its implications for climbing.
In 2005 the case was dismissed. The U.S. District Court judge agreed with the NPS that Yosemite was immune from such lawsuits because rangers have discretion in warning the public of possible dangers. It was hardly dead, though: The Terbushes appealed, and in recent months all of the issues were reviewed again. On February 21, the Ninth Circuit sent the case back to District Court.
Circuit Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote: “We agree with the district court’s analysis with respect to the failure to warn claims and those regarding the design and construction of the wastewater facilities, but the record is insufficient to rule as a matter of law on the Terbushes’ maintenance claims, and so we reverse and remand on this issue.”
I am gratified to see the duty-to-warn dismissal, the one that was crucial to climbers, upheld.
Jason Keith, policy director for the Access Fund, says, “If the NPS is liable they’d be much more nervous about climbing injuries and the resulting liability, and might increase climbing regulations.” The potential for restrictions extended to other areas.
The maintenance issue is separate, because maintenance is not considered to involve agency discretion. If mismanagement is proven, unnatural dangers caused by negligence would be different from the natural dangers that climbers assess and accept or avoid.
A lingering question is whether Peter Terbush would have wanted this case, which could have impacted his sport and his friends, in litigation.
Inherent to climbing is that we assume risk every time we tie in. There is not always someone to blame, and attributing liability can have far-reaching and unintended consequences."
http://www.rockandice.com/articles/how-to-climb/article/495-the-rockfall-case-that-kept-on-ticking
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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May 31, 2012 - 08:11am PT
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Whoa, Biotch.
I hadn't heard about that lawsuit. It is kind of like sueing gravity.
This is how the U.S. is very, very, different from the rest of the world. We have all of these laws and ways to sue. Can you imagine Hankster sitting on the couch playing HALO all day long?
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gstock
climber
Yosemite Valley
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May 31, 2012 - 08:43am PT
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FYI, the court case was dismissed in its entirety by the District Court in early 2010.
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Stewart Johnson
climber
lake forest
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May 31, 2012 - 09:31am PT
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todd and myself were climbing green dragon twenty some years ago.
sounded like a fleet of helicopters... nope just a spray of small rocks with bigger ones(grapefruit sized) mixed in. we were very lucky to not die. place seemed like a death trap.
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Rankin
Social climber
Greensboro, North Carolina
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May 31, 2012 - 09:58am PT
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I did Apron Jam to Mr. Natural the season before the fatality in '99. I knew Kyle from that season, and I'm sure he must have been pretty freaked out to have survived such an event while climbing.
Great routes, but I don't think I'll ever go up there again. Too much action over the past 15 years.
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Bruce Morris
Social climber
Belmont, California
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May 31, 2012 - 03:41pm PT
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Think Urmas and I did both pitches of "Green Dragon" back in 1983 and then finished up "Mr Natural" to the ledge. I think the whole combo like that used to be referred to as the Lysergic Wall. The second 5.11a pitch of "Green Dragon" actually seemed more run out and committing than the technially harder first pitch. Al Swanson and I went above "Mr Natural" to start a route Al later finished, naming it "Bad Acid", that seemed to have so many hanging loose rocks on it that it was easy to see how giant rock falls could cut loose and cream anyone at the base of Mr Natural.
That area, incidentally, especially over by the Punch Bowl, has always been subject to major rock fall danger. Just take a look at the talus fan over there. I remember almost getting creamed by a rock slide that blotted out the sun while rapping down from "Lean Years", which is in the same general vicinity.
Seems as though in the spring there are more rock falls over there. The fall is somewhat more stable.
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