1977 Airplane Crash in Yosemite

Sometimes it's just about the journey.

A libelous/slanderous lawsuit would result in a subpoena for SuperTopo to divulge the....naw....I don't think I'll go there yet.

How about the latest California cyber bully laws. Naw...I'll not use them either.

sidmo...you are one very strange and deranged personality. All this because I originally turned down your offer to proofread and edit my book. You never offered up any bonfires as to your background. You never offered up any samples of your work. And yet you wanted me to open my back door and let you in.

I think in the long run sidmo's ID will be discovered. And yet I'll not let on to who he is so he'll be able to sleep at night along with Chainsaw.

YOU PHUCKIN PHONY - YOU CAN'T WRITE YOUR WAY OUT OF A WET PAPER BAG WITH A HOLE IN IT - YOU'RE STUCK, ADMIT IT

The rest is twistory.

Sep 17, 2008 - 03:44pm PT
not sure how filter works - ok, here's more vague recollections - the plane was for many of us, our first brush with unlimited wealth (or so it seemed at the time) - someone remarked about yabo eating in the MR instead of scrounging trays in the caf - well there was way more than that, without insulting guys who got by on so little (and guys, like yabo, who were so talented we couldn't even carry their chalk bag deserve to be remembered for what they did on the rock and not how they fueled their ascents) - it was a seismic shift in attitudes that occured subsequent to the plane - and more than new tents in camp 4 - a lot of climbers who were around at the time weren't just in sunnyside - many of us flew under the radar in cabins and dorms even without jobs (and sometimes even without girlfriends) - we were exposed to a good bit of risk as we operated under the nose of LEOs and the few federales downtown - to be seen was to be noticed, and many of us lived undercover but lived well - my personal vice was taking chances by eating at the ahwahnee every day - but everyone knew why we could do that all of a sudden - and the shift in tastes was more than gastronomic - gold lumbo was replaced by white line fever, and french wine with handmade labels - spent a few hundred bucks in chinatown once on korean ginseng - there was a comprehensive shift in consumption habits, and some of us weren't the better for it - but i learned lessons that i needed to learn, as i alluded to in my first post - when real wealth came later in life, wealth that was self-perpetuating and not just like living in a town where everyone hit the lottery at the same time, i was better able to resist temptation, or at least moderate it - imagine if some of us had been given credit cards before we learned (from the plane) how to handle wealth?
i shudder to think - but onto the negativity - we honestly believed that: A/ some of us took too much (were greedy), and B/bad luck followed those good-guys-gone-bad
now i'm not into the naming names thing - if my cryptic references to the vw van at the garage in the village with its head stoved in between the headlights don't ring a bell about a subsequent death and the miraculous recovery of a leg i'd rather not elaborate in this forum - but another loss was far from home, in the east bay and grisly like a bad movie - all of a sudden our idyllic life in the valley was shattered by obsene wealth, followed closely by equally obsene greed - that's apart of the story that needs to be told as well - for every frugal hippie that bought land and settled down there was another who developed a nasty habit that lingered on far longer than the sudden wealth - to me, that was the sad thing about it - we were happy and broke, and then wealthy and frustrated by concerns that never existed before - anyone who danced at cedar grove on a weekend night must remember all the trips outside and back in - hell, we might as well have been at studio 54 instead of down the road in midpines, except we still dressed like climbers - some habits are hard to break and we learned how hard after the plane - i hope i'm both making sense and not making sense, if you were there you should understand at least some of this even if viewed through the narrow perspective of sunnyside - there was a lot of money spent on things other than gear, although we blew a ton on gear/gadgets too - if you look at what just happened with the mortgage crisis you can see what damage sudden wealth/credit can do to people with weak wills - don't get me wrong, i had my fun and don't regret it, but as my friends gradually developed problems they never had before the plane i gained a healthy respect for honest poverty

Topic Author's Original Post - May 21, 2005 - 10:35pm PT

In 1977 a plane loaded with dope crashed into Lower Merced Pass Lake. I knew the pilot and his wife since high school. His wife and I are working on co-authoring a book about the incident. I am looking for anyone that can recall any stories about what went on in the area during the first few weeks following the crash. We are not looking to expose anyone, we are looking for stories to add to what we already knew happened up to that night.I have talked to a few ex park employees that were there at the time and have gotten their take on things. Anyone else?

Rick Schloss
San Jose, CA
408-295-1501