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Ouch!
climber
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Aug 24, 2005 - 01:16am PT
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I must say Werner, you've seen a lot more than most people would ever care to see. I'm sure there have been times when it took a mighty strong man to keep going. It says a lot.
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Good Morning!
climber
Prescott, AZ
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Aug 24, 2005 - 03:43pm PT
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That's a fascinating site that you posted above, Werner. It (finally) adds some useful pre-incident data and information to this discussion.
Thanks,
Martin
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Mr_T
Trad climber
Somewhere, CA
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Aug 24, 2005 - 07:31pm PT
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I'm sure they'll seriously consider closing a world famous look-out (and it's now world famous bathroom), so that a few of us can climb in a rock fall zone. While they're at it, they'll probably install that snack bar on top of El Cap. And showers in camp 4!
And to rebut the earlier comment - if you had to pee, and there were 50 old ladies in front of you who just unloaded from a tour bus, waiting for the Glacier Point bathroom, who, by my highly scientific calculation, only take 1.45mins between flushes, would you (1) wait behind them for ~8mins, or (2) do as many at New Year's in Times Square do, pee somewhere else, or (3) pee off the edge of GP?
T
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Ouch!
climber
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Aug 24, 2005 - 07:41pm PT
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As bad as crowds are in Yosemite, it has to be much safer than Walmart parking lots. Less shooting and stabbing. May be due to Yosemite having a better class of bears.
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Burns
Trad climber
Arlington, VA
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Aug 24, 2005 - 08:15pm PT
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LEB, please refrain from drawing comparisons between Yosemite and New Jersey. It is blasphemous.
Seriously though, the crowds can be a hassle in the Valley, but they really aren't that hard to generally avoid, assuming you are a fairly competent leader. I'd say probably best to avoid the Valley in peak season unless you are confident leading 5.10 and/or are willing to make long and painful approaches to more obscure climbs. Fat tourons don't venture far from the road. The crowds can't detract from the Valley, the Valley just makes the crowds seem like that much more of a gross affront to what the Valley deserves to be. They certainly suck, but until they require a trad rack and a climbing resume at the gate, they are a reality.
The difference between climbing and hang gliding or BASE jumping is not that climbing is a more "American" activity, but that there is a history behind it. It has been an established activity in the Valley in some form or another for quite some time. The park put a stop to the other activities before they ever really got started. I don't doubt that the government is capable of outlawing climbing in the park, I just doubt that they'll be able to do it, and additionally if they do, I'd be more than happy to go out there and risk arrest to climb there. I'm sure many others would too. There are already people out there running from the fuzz because the *gasp* stay in the park for more than a week! How dare they! They can outlaw climbing if they want to, but they'll never stop people from climbing in the Valley.
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Pat Spydell
climber
Berkeley, CA
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Aug 24, 2005 - 08:45pm PT
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the reason for pusuing damages in the form of monetary compensation is to ensure that the same problem will not happen again in the future. that's how people "get away" with huge suits and still have enough balls to walk down the street holding their heads up w/out people saying, "look Hank, I think that's the guy."
Basic philosophy of Law:
hit them where it hurts the most...the pocketbook....that'll keep 'em from doing it again.
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Mr_T
Trad climber
Somewhere, CA
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Aug 24, 2005 - 11:07pm PT
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"hit them where it hurts the most...the pocketbook....that'll keep 'em from doing it again."
The "them" is the NPS - a gov't agency who has no mandate to turn a profit. Again, the NPS is a gov't agency that can lose all the money they want. It's tax dollars, not Halliburton corp. earnings that one family is trying to get. And hurt? Who's going to hurt? NPS park users. Plain and simple. Do you really think any higher up in the NPS has lost any sleep over this?
What happened after the flooding damage? $20 entrance fees. They could probably raise fees $5 and not blink. Even if the number of users dropped ever so slightly, it'd be welcome - less traffic.
If climbers on a cliff are a liablility, then climbers will be removed from the equation. Think BLM or whoever wouldn't close Lee Vining if the suit was won? Sure a bathroom might have it's leech field re-routed somewhere. Great.
Sure, NPS would not be too successfull in banning climbing outright. (I'd show up to get a mug shot for climbing if it was banned.) However, permits and closures are not hard to enforce. Look at Hueco (I do not claim to know much about Hueco) - there is some form of closure from what I understand. An easy solution for them is to declare that climbing on various cliffs is entering a "vertical wilderness area" and permits will be required. No permit? $100 fine, and the LEO's tosses you on
out. How sweet would that be for the LEO's?
Might a better solution be for climbers to help pay for fixing the bathroom solution - step in get this whole thing to go away? Isn't it in our best interest for this to "go away"? I must be smoking some of that green stuff that grows up on Michael's ledge...
T
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Tom Bruskotter
Trad climber
Seattle
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Aug 25, 2005 - 03:10pm PT
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I totally agree that we climbers need to accept personal responsibility for our actions, but shouldn't this moral requirement for accepting responsibility for ones actions extend to all parties involved, including NPS?
Twice in my climbing career, falling rock almost hit me. Both times could have been a quick trip to the next world, but I blamed no one but myself for being in those situations. I'm sure many of you on this forum have had similar experiences.
If the NPS is responsible for triggering the rockfalls on GPA, why don't you Fans of Personal Responsibility (FPR, of which I am also a member) demand that they accept THEIR responsibility? Or, do you believe large organizations are exempt from personal responsibility?
It's been mentioned on this thread that the NPS refused to allow a tracer dye test to be done on the two leach fields in question. If this is true, it means the NPS is far less interested in accepting personal responsibility than we climbers are. It also means that if toilet water did NOT flow to the two rockfalls, the Park Service intentionally refused an opportunity to prove they were not responsible.
I know some of you cannot believe that a toilet caused rockfall. As a climber with a degree in Geological Sciences, Engineering Geology specifically, I am here to tell you that it is possible, and in this case even probable.
Snow melt and heavy rains have acted on the unstable slopes of GPA for thousands of years. In that time the slopes have come into equilibrium with the effect of groundwater, as it natural fluctuates.
When man pumps high quantities of additional water into the ground, this puts the whole system into disequilibrium. This additional water exerts more pressure on, and reduces the coefficient of friction in, the rock it flows through. On or near unstable slopes, this can trigger landslides. This is thoroughly studied, well documented, and FORESEEABLE.
Several of you have suggested that this is a frivolous lawsuit, that it has no basis in fact. I hope I have contributed to an understanding of why this case is probably not frivolous.
Indeed, there's another way of looking at this lawsuit: it could protect climbers from organizations that would build rockfall-causing septic crappers for tourons on unstable slopes above the cliffs we climb on, just to "enhance the experience" of tour bus gapers, after they build roads or gondolas to the top of El Cap, Half Dome and Squamish Chief.
I'm done. Thanks for your time.
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Spinmaster K-Rove
Trad climber
Stuck Under the Kor Roof
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Aug 25, 2005 - 03:48pm PT
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"If the NPS is responsible for triggering the rockfalls on GPA, why don't you Fans of Personal Responsibility (FPR, of which I am also a member) demand that they accept THEIR responsibility? Or, do you believe large organizations are exempt from personal responsibility? "
Yes! But that takes the form of corecting the problem and educating the public, NOT paying out millions of dollars. It would be one thing if they had known about the increased threat of rockfall due to the sewers and not said anything, but that doesn't not appear to be the case.
In any event the Apron was a well known rockfall area. The NPS may have unwittingly increased the rate of rockfall, but that could have happened to this poor guy even if there WEREN'T leaky sewers on top of Glacier Point.
Its like certain unnamed assh*les in the climbing community who blame the NPS for the death of the BASE jumper who fled and leaped in to the Merced to attempt to avoid capture.
We accept a higher risk by climbing. Lawsuits like this only encourage policy makers to control and restrict access to our beloved activity. If land owners and land managers can't trust that climbers truly 'climb at our own risk' then we are in big trouble. The NPS wasn't trundling boulders.
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Spinmaster K-Rove
Trad climber
Stuck Under the Kor Roof
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Aug 25, 2005 - 03:50pm PT
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"Snow melt and heavy rains have acted on the unstable slopes of GPA for thousands of years. In that time the slopes have come into equilibrium with the effect of groundwater, as it natural fluctuates."
The natural equilibrium is decay. Glacier point has been crumbling into dirt for thousands of years. There is no 'homeostasis' of erosion with cliffs like this. They fall apart. Period. We may be able to speed up or slow down the process, but it is an ongoing and inevitable process. Just like life.
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Spinmaster K-Rove
Trad climber
Stuck Under the Kor Roof
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Aug 25, 2005 - 05:36pm PT
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And the less of them will want to pay to preserve the cool places you want to be or will care when your activities are restricted. There are those who would rather seen Yosemite run by Disney than by the Dept. of the Interior.
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Spinmaster K-Rove
Trad climber
Stuck Under the Kor Roof
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Aug 25, 2005 - 06:20pm PT
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I would love it if hypothetically the Park was relatively empty but the reality is that the less that people go the parks the less they will want to preserve them and subsidize them. Your $65 park pass would be more like $6500 if 'everyone' went to Disneyland and cared not for the Park System. Either that or they would be turned over to private corps and we'd have gondolas to the top of Half-Dome.
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Mr_T
Trad climber
Somewhere, CA
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Aug 25, 2005 - 08:46pm PT
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Looks like this thread is mostly dead. If anyone is still reading, I'm going to add a few final comments:
Whether the NPS was "right or wrong" is not the issue I care about (and I'll argue that this should be the issue for most of the folks here). What I care is whether climbers will be seen as a liablity for the NPS after this suit. If we are perceived as a liablity, we will be restricted to a point that we are not longer a bunch of lawsuits waiting to happen. Permits, cliff closures, quotas, but probably not an outright ban. Our activities WILL be restricted IF we are a liability - it is the responsibility of the NPS to do so.
Harsh as it may sound, the freedom of thousands of climbers is worth more to me than $10M divided between one family and their lawyers. I am sorry that a family lost a son. However, the law suit is where my sympathy ends. This family is not seeking to rectify the problem with the bathroom (ie sue for removal of the leech fields). Instead they are asking for personal compensation (and perhaps the satisfaction that the NPS is in part to blame for their son's death). As a result of their demands for personal compensation, the freedom of every climber in Yosemite (and on public lands) may be jeaopardized.
Yeah, I'm starting to sound like a neocon ranting and raving about freedom. But look, I'd support these folks if they were asking for moving the bathrooms or diverting sewage elsewhere. Correlation or not, why not fix the bathrooms? Perhaps the family could involve the Access Fund in a large scale lobby effort? As a community we could get the problem fixed without the NPS admitting guilt (and THAT is pretty darn imporant here). If the NPS doesn't have to say that they screwed up, then that's huge. It's going to be a long costly fight to make a judge say the NPS was wrong (and it's not like the individuals involved in the bathroom drainage will ever be held accountable anyway).
But support these people in their quest for $10M so that they can say "NPS, you were wrong" for their own satisfaction!? No way!
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Mr_T
Trad climber
Somewhere, CA
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Aug 25, 2005 - 09:06pm PT
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One more for the Tom fellow:
"...this lawsuit: it could protect climbers from organizations that would build rockfall-causing septic crappers for tourons on unstable slopes above the cliffs we climb on...".
Indeed we could be "protected" from rock throwing tourons on top of Half Dome by banning climbing on Half Dome. We will be "protected" thru cliff closures - that's a fact. The NPS will NEVER do anything to keep a cliff open to climbing. They will never, in any way, do anything to ensure the safety of a cliff (except by banning all climbing on that cliff). And they'll be sure to ban in a good conservative way so that nobody ever gets hurt. They cannot reasonably ensure anyone's saftey if they are climbing in the first place - it's dangerous!
And isn't it *our* responsibilty to determine the stability of a cliff, regardless of whether a crapper is there?? Isn't it *our* responsibility to determine that the leaky crapper equals danger (since it is's so obvious and FORSEEABLE in the first place)?!
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Tom Bruskotter
Trad climber
Seattle
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Aug 25, 2005 - 09:46pm PT
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Mr. Rove,
With all due respect, I think you misunderstand some things:
First, understand there was never a "leaky sewer" pouring water into the cracked rock at GPA. There was never a sewer pipe taking all that water to the valley. The cracks in the rock WERE the sewer - that is what a "septic system" is.
Second, don't confuse my use of "equilibrium" with "homeostatic" (your word). You know that I know rockfall naturally occurs, so you can infer that I mean "dynamic equilibrium". I wasn't arguing that natural rockfall had stopped.
Subsurface water is powerful. Glacier Point could be reduced to rubble in hours if you forced enough water into it. I'm exaggerating to make a point here. Yes, GPA is falling apart naturally. But this doesn't mean that it's OK to make it fall apart faster and kill people.
You say "The NPS wasn't trundling boulders." No, not with their hands anyway. NPS sent water to do the pushing for them. Water pushes. You've been pushed around by a river, or a wave? Yes? Pushing is applying force to an area. Actually, water trundles more effectively than hands because it also makes stuff slide easier.
If you evaluate the facts of this situation, not just your misunderstandings of it, negligence and liability on the part of NPS becomes easier to see. This was the Park Service's plan: Direct thousands of gallons of liquid per day into a leachfield of unstable jointed (cracked) rock on the East flank of Glacier Point above an established recreation area and campground. When that plan blew out a huge chunk of rock in 1996 that killed a person, did NPS understand that the septic system caused the rockfall? We don't know. But if they didn't know, then why did they abandon the East leach field, build a new leach field on the North flank of Glacier Point, and redirect the sewage there? 'Cuz they felt like it?! Come on! We're smarter than that.
Before 1996, I think you could argue that the NPS isn't liable. But after that 1996 rockfall, I believe there is sufficient warning to stop doing the septic thing. They could have corrected the problem and warned people about the increased hazard of rockfall. But if they did that, and then a massive rockfall killed campers in Camp Curry, then they would be in huge trouble, so they just said nothing.
As you rightly point out, this is "a well known rockfall area." Of course the NPS knew that too, which brings us to the question: "Should the NPS have known that intentionally directing high quantities of water into the jointed rock of a "well known rockfall area" would increase rockfall?" YES, absolutely.
Try to build a "septic system", not a sewer OK?, you try to build a "septic system" in any county or municipality with unstable slopes and you will first have to get geologic testing done to show that your system will not make these slopes landslide. That's if they even allow septic systems to be built at all. That is how well-documented and how notorious the relationship is between septic systems and landslides.
I am sick of frivolous lawsuits too. But sometimes you need to look beyond the soundbite. Again, I'll say it - this was tradgedy was foreseeable and therefore they are liable.
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Mr_T
Trad climber
Somewhere, CA
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Aug 25, 2005 - 11:08pm PT
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"They could have corrected the problem and warned people about the increased hazard of rockfall."
Essentially your argument is that the NPS should have closed Glacier Point to climbing or posted some increased warning.
Last I checked, it is NOT the job of the NPS to assess rockfall hazards beyond what affects people on the ground in THEIR established rec areas. They say that hiking here is reasonably safe. To my knowledge, the NPS has NEVER established climbing areas. They've said, you're free to climb anywhere and that it's dangerous and that they're not responsible if you get hurt. The use our terms to refer to what we climb, but never establish anything.
They've closed climbing areas in the past to protect people on the ground (upper Yos Falls). They have posted warnings about rock fall - Middle Cathedral comes to mind. But they are not required to assess the specific structural hazards as far as climbing up a cliff goes - it's dangerous and they do not recommend it.
If this suit determines that climbing areas are 'established recreational areas' that the NPS is responsible for, then they'll be sure to close as many as they need to avoid these suits.
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 25, 2005 - 11:34pm PT
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The whole thing is a crock of sh-it! Look at the fu-cking rock fall scar, man! It's thousands of feet from the toilets.
Stupid idiots actually believe those toilets and construction caused this are dreaming! We had a rock fall on the John Muir trail also and it almost wiped out a few folks too. Luckily nobody was killed.
Stupid idiots always want to believe someone else besides themselves are responsible for everything.
Next time don't be born here! You have that choice!
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Minerals
Social climber
The Deli
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Aug 25, 2005 - 11:44pm PT
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I guess geologists are stupid idiots.
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 26, 2005 - 12:11am PT
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No not geologists, Speculators .......
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Melissa
Gym climber
berkeley, ca
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Aug 26, 2005 - 11:38am PT
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The last time I was in the Valley we hiked the 4 mile trail up to the Glacier Point overlook. There was an 8ish year old boy tossing stuff over the railing and watching it fall down. I'm surprised that this occurence...which surely must be pretty regular...isn't cause for the very rockfall averse to want to stay away from that place. What is NPS's liability for being expected to know that 8 year old boys will toss stuff over the rail?
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