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ionlyski
Trad climber
Polebridge, Montana
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Feb 27, 2018 - 08:41pm PT
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Kevin,
One of the better posts on this forum and certainly this thread to come out in a long time. Cool!
edit-not cool someone lost their life but cool recount of 1st hand history
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Risk
Mountain climber
Marooned, 855 miles from Tuolumne Meadows
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Feb 27, 2018 - 08:48pm PT
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That correlates. The camp was to the right side side of the trail, on the way out. I vaguely recall some of the group leaving during the night. The guy I met with the wallet couldn't have avoided me, as it was right at the lake outlet where everyone went since the trail up was on the east side of the creek and the crash was on the west side of the lake. At the end of the day, I came crashing down at dusk on the run from some guys who claimed to have a gun and demanded I carry part of their load. They were in the midst of being way weighted down when I ditched them, down trail. Your camp and group was my safe sanctuary from these thugs, really. TT waved me in and said something like "hey dude, slow down, take a break with us, what's the hurry?"
BTW- Ran into Roger Bannister [RIP] on his way down that same day, down around Clark Fork.
EDIT: as I recall, tension and paranoia seemed to grow the further one got from the lake and the closer one got to a road. I might have known Jack from Boystown, but don't recall. Once anyone got out with a load, things went from mellow and low key to some sort of drug-running thriller movie in real life, unexpectedly.
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Squint
Trad climber
Colorado
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Feb 28, 2018 - 05:13am PT
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The timeline is a bit foggy. I remember him holing up down by Foresta for some time. I visited him and another wierdo friend down there a couple times.
I pleaded with him to keep his mouth shut about the documents and money. It wasn't so much he was a big mouth and definitely not a braggart, but just an open book. When the shady dudes and the journos started turning up in the valley it was already well known Jack found the docs. I don't know if he was trying to placate me, or it was fact, but he told me he buried them.
Of course everyone had their own theories about who these dudes were and why they were taking so much interest in a plane load that was already lost. I had my own. That theory changed later in life when I had more experience. And Yeah... I think those guys really were scary dudes.
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ionlyski
Trad climber
Polebridge, Montana
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Feb 28, 2018 - 07:58am PT
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So what's the consensus? Was he maybe "offed"? I thought that was pretty much debunked quite convincingly by Werner and others in a different thread. Or maybe even this thread but I sure aint goinna start back at the beginning again.
More please. Real life-better than any book or movie.
Arne
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Feb 28, 2018 - 09:01am PT
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Warbler...From what a Miwok told me , a visit from a Great Horned owl has something to do with death...
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Feb 28, 2018 - 09:06am PT
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A GHO has hooted at me every night between October and February for 25 years.
It ain’t working, yet.
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gruzzy
Social climber
socal
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Feb 28, 2018 - 10:37am PT
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Why don't you guys with all the knowledge of the actual events band together, write the book, or find a writer to write the book, and tell this amazing adventure story?
The best two pages of this thread for sure. Owl thing gave me goosebumps
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gruzzy
Social climber
socal
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Feb 28, 2018 - 10:40am PT
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Another question if I read it correctly. The black book got buried, still?
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ionlyski
Trad climber
Polebridge, Montana
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Feb 28, 2018 - 10:44am PT
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Licky wouldn't like that. It hasn't been cleared.
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wilbeer
Mountain climber
Terence Wilson greeneck alleghenys,ny,
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Feb 28, 2018 - 04:37pm PT
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http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/topic/33990-1977-yosemite-plane-crash/?page=3
Great story,a lot more to it all than I had thought and I have been reading this thread for awhile.
I see that Jack Dorn was from Utica. I climbed a bit in Little Falls and remember meeting a guy who put up a lot of routes there long after Jack had perished. I wonder if it was Jacks brother or relative. His name was Dorn.
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Don Paul
Gym climber
Denver CO
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Feb 28, 2018 - 11:51pm PT
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It's just weird that he gets the drug dealer's phone book, tells everybody, and then dies.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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It's just weird that he gets the drug dealer's phone book, tells everybody, and then dies.
Life is weird. Why would some goon go way up the Falls Trail to off him?
Lots easier to take him back of some boulder and plug him.
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Don Paul
Gym climber
Denver CO
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Also weird is that the toxicology report showed that there was no alcohol in Dorn's system when he fell off the cliff. So, who is promoting the false narrative that he was drunk?
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Sid Mo
climber
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Weren't there supposed to have been "guys in " Italian" suits and dress shoes seen on the trail about the same time? I remember hearing that at the Ahwahnee right after he fell. Yeah, I hung at the Ahwahnee, we weren't as in the loop as you camp 4 dudes but the coffee at the lodge caf sucked and they wanted us to pay for it. A bellman told me that and those guys were conversational with people visiting the valley that most folks never met. Rich mafiosi perhaps, or feds passing thru, Big time dealers, big shots in general usually stayed there.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Warbler, professionals don’t worry about making it look an accident. As the Godfather said:
“It’s just business.”
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Risk
Mountain climber
Marooned, 855 miles from Tuolumne Meadows
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There are too many unlikely prerequisites for this to have been anything but a freak accident:
1. They would have had to have known beforehand of this one spot on the trail where such a drop-off exists just feet from the trail.
2. There was no notice that this SAR operation was going to occur until it did.
3. They would have had to get to the spot on the trail before Jack arrived.
4. They would had to know beforehand that Jack would be on the team.
Unless the need for a SAR was staged and there was inside help to make this happen, it's impossible it was anything but an accident. John Dill is a physicist and then some; what's he say?
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Jack wore coke-bottle glasses...? Sounds like he could have walked off the cliff...? A friend who wears thick glasses stepped off a 10 foot drop off and broke his knee cap shredding his hands...Got him in the boat and paddled back to shore in an electrical storm then threw him over my shoulder and carried him back the remaining mile to the car..
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Risk
Mountain climber
Marooned, 855 miles from Tuolumne Meadows
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The killer(s) would've needed to be in excellent physical condition. YOSAR team members are always in tip-top shape and can power up to the top of the falls in an hour or less. It wasn't a Corelone that could have followed him, and few people in the Valley are in physical shape comparable to anyone on YOSAR. Nevertheless....
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Lest everybody forgets, the fellows flying the plane died.
Would they have used the proceeds of their endeavor to found an orphanage down in Mexivo where their contraband originated, had they reached their destination
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Albion
Trad climber
Bristol, UK
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Mar 16, 2018 - 01:06pm PT
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Looks as though they cross the ridge a little further west these days
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