Sometime in the early seventies Mike Corbett and I decided to embark on a major expedition to climb one of the worlds most difficult and dangerous routes. So we geared up our piton, bashie and ice screw racks, organized our bivy gear, packed up the llamas and set out for Half Dome to do the notorious Snake Dike.

After exhausting ourselves dodging tourists on the trail and bushwhacking up the slabs we arrived at the base of the route, only to discover some carrion blocking access to the entry moves. No not a squirrel, deer or yeti but a full on dead guy. He was lying face down and fully clothed including a down jacket which had left a trail of feathers stuck in some dried blood for about a hundred feet straight up the route.

Not the best way to start a climb.

He was basically dressed in street clothes – no harness, slings, rope, bong or any other stuff that might have indicated he was a seventies era climber. This prevented us from seeing if his climbing shoes might fit one of us (like stories of some former rescue team members who's name shall not be mentioned here). We could see a bulge in his back pocket that was obviously a wallet, so we argued over who would touch the guy to get the wallet. Since Mike adamantly refused the task fell to me. We examined his ID and though the wallet contained some cash I restrained myself and didn't steal it. We tossed on our packs and headed back down to the valley.

As we walked down we discussed doing our civic duty and reporting this to the tools. Now the curious thing was that Mike, not being very mechanically inclined, had some time earlier gotten into some trouble with the tools. The upshot was that he had been banned from the park for six months. During that six months he never actually left the park. Folks who were around back then will probably remember some funny guy walking through Yosemite Village wearing a ski mask, even after winter had long since turned to spring. Of course anyone who knew Mike could still recognize him from a mile away from his walk and stature and it was amazing that the tools didn't. So having Mike walk into the Vistor's Center to report a dead guy was out of the question. Once again the task fell to me which I thought was getting tiresome.

So being the only upstanding citizen involved here, I reported the dead guy at the Visitors Center, where they had me wait for some tools to arrive to take my statement. They arrived, took and after some secretive talk over their radios, insisted that I accompany them to the LEO office for some further discussion. They put me into an interrogation room and started grilling me about how I “knew” the dead guy. They pulled the whole good-cop, bad-cop routine while I insisted that I never knew or heard of this guy before. I was there for about four hours. You see, the tools were suspicious of climbers in general and especially of climbers who had long hair and didn't look like tools themselves. Plus the dead guy happened to be a park employee who worked at the garage. Yosemite is a small community and having a long time local climber claim he didn't know this dead park employee was a stretch for them. I honestly didn't know the guy and neither did Mike. It turned out the reason they held me so long was that they were frantically trying to find the dead guys brother, who also worked for the park, so that he could come in and recognize me as a friend or acquaintance of the dead guy. Then they could arrest me for giving a false report and suspicion of murder. Well the brother finally shows up, comes into the interrogation room, gives me a good look over and leaves. I'd never seen this guy before or since. Shortly after the tools let me go.

That's how I almost got arrested for murder in Yosemite. Later that very same year I almost got arrested for armed robbery in Jackson, Wyoming but that's another trip report.



Though I've taken some literary license here, most of the facts are essentially true. My sincere condolences and appologies to the dead guy's family. I can't even remember his name and wouldn't post it if I could. All other names have not been changed since we're all guilty of something.