Daring rescue on El Capitan in Yosemite

Check out this report from the NPS Digest from last week. A seriously injured climber, and his inexperienced team, were rescued off the 3000-foot face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Details from the rescue are in the NPS report below.


Park dispatch received a report of an injured climber on a climbing route known as The Nose on El Capitan on the evening of Tuesday, August 24th. He was a 47-year-old Korean national, part of a four-person Korean climbing team. Rangers were unable to communicate with the climbers due to a language barrier, so little information was available at the outset.

It was eventually determined that he’d dislodged a large rock just below the Camp 4 bivy site, that he was in stable condition, and that he was unable to climb further. A helicopter short-haul mission was planned to extricate him from the rock face, but had to be cancelled due to the shear vertical wall at the climbing party’s location. A small technical rescue team was sent to the top of El Capitan to lower an attendant to him, but that operation had to be suspended due to darkness.

A plan was formulated by IC Shannon Kupersmith to send supplemental personnel first thing the following morning to support the lowering operation.

On Wednesday, additional personnel were flown to the summit of El Capitan for the technical lowering operation. Prior to the start of the mission a spotter in El Capitan Meadow was able to communicate with the climbing party and determine that the man might be paralyzed in his lower extremities. Two medics who reached the scene stabilized the climber and packaged him in a litter.

An alternate plan to immediately evacuate him from the wall using the "bean bag/short-haul" technique was employed. This technique involves sending a line from the hovering helicopter to the attendant/medic. The attendant/medic then retrieves a tag line attached to the short-haul line from the helicopter while the helicopter maintains a safe rotor distance from the vertical rock face. One attendant then attached himself and the climber to the short-haul line, which was followed by immediate release from the wall anchor. He was then flown to El Capitan meadow and medevaced to a hospital.

The remaining members of the climbing team were unable to lower themselves off the route due to their lack of experience and also had to be rescued. Two additional lowering operations were conducted to evacuate the Korean climbers off El Capitan’s 3,000-foot face. These operations were conducted on the hottest day of the summer to date, with the temperature over 100 degrees.


Jeff
HikingintheSmokys.com

Video: Yosemite rock fall

Since glaciers retreated around fifteen thousand years ago, rock fall has been the major force of change in Yosemite Valley.

Below is the latest video from Yosemite National Park. As part of a series known as Yosemite Nature Notes, the video chronicles the role of rock fall in the evolution of the famous granite walls that dominate Yosemite Valley.

It features a cliff-side interview with a rappelling park geologist, and some amazing rock fall footage that was captured by a passing tourist. That same tourist revisits the slide area the following year and compares what he saw in his view finder to the actual rocks at the slide area. Pretty amazing.

I've been hiking in Colorado on a couple different occasions when we heard the loud crack of rock hitting the ground below a cliff face. It's kind of a frightening sound. Fortunately we were far enough away to be in no danger on those occasions.

Although you may not realize it, the Great Smoky Mountains is not immune to rock slides. In 1951 Mt. Leconte experienced a massive debris slide after a cloudburst dropped 4 inches of rain in just one hour. The series of slides created the large V-slash on the south side of the mountain.

Enjoy the video:




Jeff
HikingintheSmokys.com Detailed information on trails in the Smoky Mountains; includes trail descriptions, key features, pictures, video, maps, elevation profiles, news, and more.

Frazil Ice

The last gasps of winter in the Yosemite Valley.

Check out this amazing video showing the "giant slurpee" that forms when "frazil ice" collects on Yosemite Falls and flows down Yosemite Creek each spring like a lava flow.

As you might expect, the scenery in this film is awesome:





Jeff
HikingintheSmokys.com Detailed information on trails in the Smoky Mountains; includes trail descriptions, key features, pictures, video, maps, elevation profiles, news, and more.

Video: Seven Days on the John Muir Trail

"The mountains are calling and I must go"

- John Muir

Below is a video from Ryan Commons that documents his hike across the Sierra Mountains along the John Muir Trail.

Ryan made the trip from the Mt. Whitney Portal to Happy Isles in Yosemite National Park - 222.4 miles - in just seven days! Along the way he climbed a total of 42,000 feet, or, put another way, almost 8 miles of climbing! Obviously he put in some pretty insane milage each day to accomplish this goal.

Ryan followed the trail up to Mount Whitney, which, at 14,496 ft, is the highest peak in the lower 48. From there he passed through King's Canyon National Park, Sequoia National Park, and the Ansel Adams Wilderness before ending his journey in Yosemite.

At 40 minutes in length, the video is fairly long, but is very well made, and well worth the spectacular scenery alone.

WINTER IS COMING - Seven Days on the John Muir Trail from Ryan Commons on Vimeo.

(if you have trouble with the streaming of the video, turning off the HD seems to help)


Jeff
HikingintheSmokys.com Detailed information on trails in the Smoky Mountains; includes trail descriptions, key features, pictures, video, maps, elevation profiles, news, and more.