Wednesday, July 20, 2011

The Magnetic Pull of a Watery Precipice

A couple of hikers have apparently been swept over Yosemite National Park's Vernal Fall waterfall.

317 feet in a straight plunge. 32 stories, basically. Why would someone do such a thing, walk up to spray-slick rocks to look over the edge? We have a park nearby here in North Carolina, South Mountains State Park, with a similar, though less high, waterfall, and people die there every year or so. Why?

3 comments:

ASM826 said...

It the Parks Service fault. All drop offs of more than 2.6 ft. should have railings. And those slick rocks should be coated with non-skid. And signs. We need more warning signs. People just aren't prepared for actual nature.

Maybe we could just close off the outside and have people watch nature on web-cams.

Murphy's Law said...

Fewer people die stupidly in North Carolina than in California because you have fewer Californians in North Carolina.

last week another Californian fell into a blow hole on Maui. No one else ever falls in there but he managed. And his fiancee says that it's someone else's fault and a lawsuit is pending.

Nuke the San Andreas now and just get it over with.

NotClauswitz said...

The NorCal folks who went to Yosemite have last-names indicating they're not originally from NorCal - they're not Mexicans either but some kind of East European.
The asshole went looking straight into the blow-hole on the wild north shore of Maui and it nailed him and swallowed him and chewed him up.
It's an amazing place but you don't go looking into the barrel of a gun.
That's f*ing suicidal-stupid or cubicle-crazy. Even if he survived on a ledge inside he would starve to death because nobody could hear him. I've been there and the ground literally shakes from the wave-water pounding and the vent-blast. It's shaky and slippery and it can knock you off your feet, and it's on the edge of a cliff with volcanic rocks at the bottom.
If you don't fall into the hole you can open up your skull on the sharp lava rocks around it - or fall into the sea and then get slammed into the hole by powerful 8-foot waves that started in California and have seen nothing to slow them down in 2,000+ miles of unimpeded freight-train travel.
A lot of people go to Hawaii and drown. They die because they're doing more water activities in a few days than they they have ever done in their whole life. Water is dangerous - even to Hawaiians who get in the water year-round.
An average of 33 Hawaii residents drown each year, a number that would be doubled if drownings among non-residents were also included. In another figure, for every Hawaiian resident who drowns snorkeling, three tourists also drown...