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Tom Bruskotter
Trad climber
Seattle
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Aug 26, 2005 - 03:11pm PT
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It all comes back to accepting responsibility for one's actions.
Mr.T - I was just repeating what Mr. Rove suggested would be the right way for NPS to accept responsibility:
"Yes! But that takes the form of corecting the problem and educating the public, NOT paying out millions of dollars."
Also Mr.T, you wrote: "To my knowledge, the NPS has NEVER established climbing areas." I agree, and I never said they did. All I said was "an established recreation area" - I meant climbers established routes there and recreate there. It's a place where people are known to be, and therefore people should not do reckless things above them.
Mr.T, I must disagree with what you said here:
"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."
(shout out to Melissa here too - Hey!)
The fact is, we ARE already protected from rock throwers. Laws exist which hold people personally responsible for hurting others with reckless endangerment. (yes, even if the person injured was climbing)
And this is wrong too:
"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)?!"
Actually, climbers are not responsible for the safe design of a project like this. That is the "Personal Responsibility" of the Engineer, who should know "only a small amount of water is needed to fill up rock joints and lead to high cleft water pressure, extreme caution should be exercised in assessing the design groundwater condition."
And finally, for the love of GOD! It's not a leaky crapper. The design of this septic system is to intentionally force hundreds of hundreds of thousands of gallons of fluid into the jointed rock. Guess what happens when you do that? This increases pressure on the unstable(known to be unstable) rock. Geologists have studied this for years. It is known and therefore a foreseeable consequence of this design. Especially the 1998 leach field, after the 1996 leach field "coincided" with massive rockfall.
And Werner, I have much respect for you man. (We met in 1985. Not that you'd remember, but you were touring little climbing shops with Ron and Peter for a slide show thing. You'd come off the PO. I asked "What's A5 like?". "Just a number." you said. You inspired me.)
So, I'll have to humbly assert that these fluids could easily have traveled thousands of feet to the rockfall area. Again, this is just science and reason. I'm not dreaming, it's physics. The Park Service could have demonstrated exactly where fluid from the leach fields went to with a tracer dye test. It's been rumored that the NPS declined to allow this test to happen. Are you, as an employee of NPS, at liberty to discuss whether this is true or not?
I respect all of you folks. You are my fellow climbers - my tribe. I'm not trying to stir up a sh$t storm here, just talking about stuff. It's nice to hear what you all are thinking.
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Mick K
climber
Northern Sierra
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Aug 26, 2005 - 03:17pm PT
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Just rember this discusion the next time you get a jury notice in the mail. Don't make excuses-give up a day of climbing and show up at court ready to serve.
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rick
Social climber
california
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Aug 26, 2005 - 03:31pm PT
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Regarding the tracer test, I don't understand why this is necessary, couldnt they just sample the water flowing out of the face and see if it had unusually high nitrate levels, which I imagine hundreds and hundreds of thousands of gallons of septic flow in one spot over a couple years would. I dont know anything about this sort of thing, just seems like it should be possible.
rick
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Mr_T
Trad climber
Somewhere, CA
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Aug 26, 2005 - 07:17pm PT
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I said:
"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)?!"
You said:
"Actually, climbers are not responsible for the safe design of a project like this."
I say: Cliffs are dangerous. The park service knows this, but lets us go up there anyway. It's an activity they 'allow', but do not say 'yes this is safe'. If the conditions change, it is up to us to evaluate them. It's not the park's job to maintain a 'safety' level in a dangerous place.
What happens if they water from the 'leaky crapper' (I know it's not a leaky crapper) starts eating away at bolts (suppose it's highly acidic, again it's not, but suppose)? They know the bolts are there. Are they responsible then?
We're responsible to evaluate cliff conditions in the same way a surfer at Maveric's or Waimea is responsible for assessing wave conditions.
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Tom Bruskotter
Trad climber
Seattle
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Aug 29, 2005 - 03:21pm PT
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Hey Mr.T
At Waimea, I installed an underwater cable in the surf zone. Twenty 2-inch diameter steel rods anchor this cable. The rods are 10-feet long but never show at low tide.
Last week, a surfer dropped in too late and fell onto one of the steel rods. He died. Now his family is trying to sue me. I am arguing that surfing is dangerous. I say his death is his responsibility, not mine.
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Mr_T
Trad climber
Somewhere, CA
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Aug 29, 2005 - 04:25pm PT
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Excellent point Tom. It gets interesting here. We'll suppose Waimea is a national park. They don't have life guards there from what I understand (I've never surfed Waimea). So NPS is not making a claim about the safety there (except that it's dangerous and people have died there before). There's coral underneath really big waves. So it's already dangerous. You've made it 'more dangeorus' - not like you installed spikes at Pacific Beach in SD.
I see two components here: "did you know that this might kill a surfer", and "that's irrelevant, surfers should have realized that underwater spikes are potential hazards"? I'll focus on the second point, because the first is obvous - yes it could (we'll return to this for GP). As for the second, I'll argue yes, surfers should have seen the danger. Just because someone surfed there before, doesn't make it safe as conditions are always changing. This seems to be an assumption climbers always make - I've seen guys TR an ice pillar only to have it collapse later that same afternoon.
But back to Waimea, if you show up, and NPS is not out there saying "safe to surf", it's up to you to assess. Make all the assumptions and observations you want, guys riding waves, construction crews laying cable, spikes at nearby beaches (rockfall on the other side of GP?), rummors of spikes. It's up to you. I'll argue that it's as if more than a few surfers had hit some kind of object under the water and that conditions had obviously changed.
As for GP - http://www.radford.edu/~cwatts/yosemite/sld007.htm - there had been slide activity for half a year before. No known cause, but the apron was slide prone and many of us knew it. Again, it was known to any climbers (myself included) that the GP was prone to rockfall and decided it was too dangerous and stayed away. When I heard of the death, my first thought was "what are they doing up there anyway?" Upper Curry housing had been evacutated - the clues were there. Did these guys do any investigation of rockfall? I'm going to guess not - otherwise they wouldn't have been there. Just because someone climbed there long ago and it was in the guide book, doesn't guarantee your safety.
Using the Waimea analogy - something under the water had been spotted at low tide a few times. Some surfers knew about it. If you don't go out and investigate for yourself, and simply assume it's safe to surf, you're taking the risk. You should have asked around about conditions.
Now back to GP crapper water and my first point - if the NPS "knew" if they had created a dangerous situation (and if they acutally did). I personally don't believe "consipiracy", but if anything, suspect incompetence. Some geologists say they should have known of the dangers. Others say the effect of drainage down a cliff face and the effects 1/4 mile (1400 feet) away is too hard to guess. This will be interesting to see in the court battle - if I dump water down the gutter in front of my house and it f's up something 1400 feed downhill, yeah I screwed up. But how much like a gutter vs. a river bed does the top of the apron act like? How much water drains elsewhere into the crack system? Is the crack system a gutter or a river bed system? How much water is making it down do the release zone? The estimate from the single geo conference (not even a jounal paper!) pegs the water flow way above what it could be. How much water flows out, how much is dissipates down other cracks on its way to the release zone? Dye tests might show...
A question that may be totally irrelevant - was this climber wearing a helmet? Would it have made any difference? I'm guessing no, but thought it worth asking.
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Mr_T
Trad climber
Somewhere, CA
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Aug 29, 2005 - 04:31pm PT
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Also Tom,
I really should have added this - if those spikes at Waimea were totally invisible and there was no way of reasonably knowing they had been installed (invisible, no rummors, etc), you'd probably be on the hook. If the GP slide had come out of nowhere, then things might be different. If you installed spikes at Pacific Beach in front of life guard towers, things would definintely be different.
How much of my argument is me "wanting the NPS to win this, and not having climing in Yos screwed with" I wonder?
T
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Aug 29, 2005 - 04:55pm PT
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From what I understand, NPS moved the leech lines after the first slide that killed somebody in Happy Isles. The location of the next slide reflected that movement. That's the issue that this case may involve. Based on what circumstances and reasons did they make that change?
Again, this isn't a climbing issue. GP Rockfall could take out Curry Village itself.
Also, a helmet wouldn't make any difference. The rockfall actually swept in along the talus slope. The climbers above weren't killed. Actually, Pete had nowhere to run in time. The ony way he could have saved himself is by pulling the leader off and running up the cliff with the leader as the counterweight.
Nobody thinks that fast
peace
karl
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Mr_T
Trad climber
Somewhere, CA
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Aug 29, 2005 - 05:10pm PT
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Yes, the bigger issue is the safety of Curry and that bathroom. However, the issue of the law suit is $10M and what's going to happen to climbers. The suit is asking for $10M and a court to says NPS was wrong and liable. They're not asking for the bathrooms to move...
As for helmets in Peter's case, I agree that one would not have made any difference. However, I would find it interesting if climbers in a known rockfall area were not wearing them. This might demonstrate that they had not made any assessment of their safety in that area.
Can we at least agree that if you walk up to a cliff, and don't check on conditions, you're taking a risk by just assuming it's safe? Does it seem reasonable that if you get hurt under those circumstances (especially when not taking the most basic protection against a known hazard), that you should be solely to blame?
T
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Tom Bruskotter
Trad climber
Seattle
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Aug 29, 2005 - 08:04pm PT
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Hey T.
Nice work tearing up my Waimea analogy - you make some good points there. We are definitely on different sides of this argument. Wish we could just talk about it in person because typing this is too much.
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Spinmaster K-Rove
Trad climber
Stuck Under the Kor Roof
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Aug 29, 2005 - 08:18pm PT
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It could be that the bathrooms were highly accelerating rockfall. That does not make the NPS liable for climbers being killed in a high-rockfall area any more than it makes them liable for someone being killed in a passing zone on a highway. Had GP collapsed on Curry Village...ok then maybe there is an argument. But there was lots of known rockfall. Whether or not the NPS accelerated it is completely irrelevant. This was not out of the blue, it was a known threat. Nobody has the right to demand millions of dollars from this situation. If they want to make sure the NPS admits error or poor judgement and fix a potential problem them I'm all for it, but making bucks is out of the question.
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vlani
Trad climber
mountain view, ca
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By whatever reason in all the talks about that GP rockfall nobody mentions the unusual weather pattern of that year. It was my second visit to the Valley, traveling from East back then. We picked up 2 weeks in mid-June to insure the nice weather. It was not. It actually started raining on us after about a week, and was getting colder. Snow started showing up on the south band slopes, and one morning we saw snow at the tables down in Camp 4. We went to check out Grotto that day.
Then the rain was over, and the weather was cold but sunny. We had to bail from the top of Serenity and not go for Sons as we got really cold climbing in t-shorts. Nights were cold - may be freezing at 1000ft above the Valley. One of the last days of the trip we climbed at the Apron area. We looked at the Apron Jam but knowing nothing about that crack technique did not go for it, tried Green dragon, some other small climbs off the talus.
The fall happened at the next weekend, we back to NJ then.
Been more into mountaineering back then, I remember thinking: "Freeze - melt cycles. Rain on big rock walls. No good. Stay around buttresses and ridges"
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Any news on this suit? I think the perliminary (?) hearing was
on Tuesday...
:- k
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rectorsquid
climber
Lake Tahoe
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If the NPS did anything to increase the rockfall in that area then they are accountable for that. It does not matter if there was always a chance of rockfall. My reasoning is that climbers take risks. We measure and gauge those risks and decide if the odds are good enough to justify the action. If suddenly the NPS changes the odds of a rockfall and the climbers are not aware that the risk has increased, they have no way to make a sound judgement. If the NPS has taken action that increased the chance of the climbers getting killed and does not tell the climbers that, it's like if the NPS cut half way through their (the climbers) rope. Sure they might be fine but the risk has changed at the hands of the NPS without their (the climbers) knowledge.
I have no opinion if the NPS really did anything wrong or not. The geologists need to figure that out and convince a court. My opinion is specific to the issue that making a dangerous area more dangerous is not okay just because there is danger already.
And is it really possible to file a suite that asks that only the toilets be removed? Maybe they would rather win than have the lawyers settle without admission of guilt and just move the toilets. Or maybe they want $$$. That's their constitutional right.
Dave
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Mr_T
Trad climber
Somewhere, CA
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Yo rsquid,
Curry Village was evacuated in mid-May. Climbers knew of an increased hazard. These guys just assumed it was 'safe' - anyone at the mountain shop could have told you about recent rock fall. It seems that they didn't even have hemlets (or so it appears, could someone confirm this?).
NPS is responsible for people who don't take the minimum safety precautions or check for objective hazards in any way?
Seems it's now a job for the real lawyers - us arm chair types need to take a seat.
T
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rickj
Trad climber
Moorpark, Ca
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Although I don't have all the facts of this case, America is being fleeced by frivolous lawsuits. Perhaps the state should consider simultaneously pursuing a fraud case against dad.
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Caddy
climber
DC
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3rd party professional opinion
I am a Civil Engineer with Bachelors from the University of Illinois and Masters in Civil Engineering from the University of California. I am a licensed professional engineer in 6 States including California. I have designed septic leach fields and have consulted on slope stabilization projects for various rockfall and landslide locations. I have read the slide show presentation by Dr. Skip Watts and do not concur with his findings.
Dr. Watts fails to present a conclusive tie between the 1998 rockfall event and the operation of the the septic leach field above Glacier Point Apron.
First, the topography map on Slide 15 shows a ridge line between the leach field and the rock fall location. Dr. Watts states that discontinuities (fractures) lead from the leach field to the rockfall zone. He shows a profile view of the area for the 1996 rockfall area but does not for the 1998 rockfall area. A profile view of this cross section would show that the drainage from the leach field would likely run down the drainage gully to the northwest in a direction away from the rockfall zone.
Second, soil saturation and seepage due to rainfall and snowmelt occurs in signifigantly greater volumes than any leach field.
Third, the Talus field is historical evidence that rockfall occurs here without the leach field.
Making the conclusion that the leach field caused the rockfall is bad science and lacks supporting data/evidence.
I would like to offer my services to the defense team to testify as a professional expert on this case. I am willing to complete a site survey of the rock fall location and present a professional report that is based on actual engineering principals and practices and not opinion and false claims. I can be contacted at magneticlip@yahoo.com
Curt Taras, PE, MSCE
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Making the conclusion that the leach field caused the rockfall is bad science and lacks supporting data/evidence.
I would like to offer my services to the defense team to testify as a professional expert on this case. I am willing to complete a site survey of the rock fall location and present a professional report that is based on actual engineering principals and practices and not opinion and false claims. I can be contacted at magneticlip@yahoo.com
Curt Taras, PE, MSCE
==
Sorry, Curt, but that is ONE thing that you will NOT be doing. As a person who renders expert opinions, I will tell you that you have "screwed the pooch" with this post. You have already posted your conclusions BEFORE doing your site survey and publishing your "professional" report.
In reality, you have come to this conclusion without any examination, personally, of the area; you have come to your conclusions after only watching a slideshow primarily intended for public viewing, not by reviewing a comprehensive engineering report; and by POSTING your conclusions of your site survey, BEFORE you have done the site survey.
Talk about experts for hire, saying whatever a lawyer wants. If the Park uses you as an expert, expect a verdict of TWENTY million dollars.
Just so you don't think that you can delete the post and regain your reputation, I've copied it, and will forward it to the plaintiff.
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BoKu
Trad climber
Douglas Flat, CA
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On Sep 2, 2005, 07:49pm PST, "Ken M" wrote:
> Sorry, Curt, but that is ONE thing that you will NOT be
> doing. As a person who renders expert opinions, I will tell
> you that you have "screwed the pooch" with this post. You
> have already posted your conclusions BEFORE doing your site
> survey and publishing your "professional" report.
>
> In reality, you have come to this conclusion without any
> examination, personally, of the area; you have come to your
> conclusions after only watching a slideshow primarily
> intended for public viewing, not by reviewing a comprehensive
> engineering report; and by POSTING your conclusions of your
> site survey, BEFORE you have done the site survey.
>
> Talk about experts for hire, saying whatever a lawyer wants.
> If the Park uses you as an expert, expect a verdict of TWENTY
> million dollars.
>
> Just so you don't think that you can delete the post and
> regain your reputation, I've copied it, and will forward it
> to the plaintiff.
Ken, I thought you were in Davis. Or is that a different Ken Murray?
Bob K.
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OldTradGuy
Ice climber
Rochester Hills, MI
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I am amazed at all the rhetoric about whether the leach field caused the slide and whether the installation was negligent.
I suppose I am adding to it?! But it is an interesting topic.
I do not have the patience for legal mumbo jumbo, and probably would not last a day in court listening to all the sophisticated sounding arguments, theories, and rebuttals.
Most of it will just be blah, blah, blah as others have said.
But, it seems obvious that the NPS did not install a bathroom with the intent of causing a landslide. No sane person would knowingly make such a decision. And regarding "they should have known", that will be tough to prove. It will be hard enough to prove that the leaching even caused the slide.
As for the closure of climbing if $10M is awarded, I doubt it.
Certainly climbers are more at risk of being hit by rockfall than the average tourist who stays in the cafeteria, gift shops, and on paved trails; however, I don't think climbers can to singled out as the only ones at risk. I would think that the NPS has more pressing problems than policing the cliffs, especially in light of budget cutbacks.
Regarding overcrowding at Yosemite, this is true to a point.
However, look around any local crag and you will find crowds.
Climbing has just gotten too popular lately and most areas don't have enough rock to support the high interest.
So yes, Yosemite is too crowded and climbers should stay away (to make room for the rest of us that love the place)!
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