This pisses me off. The amount of hubris is appalling. They told you weather was on its way but it didn’t look like it so you went anyways? So you trust your eyes that can only see a fraction of the sky more than weather satellites? Fuck off. Poor girl. Reared by a moron.
So many warning signs he just ignores. Worst was when she directly told him her shoes were too slippery.
As an avid hiker who can’t wait to introduce my kids to more difficult hikes when they grow up, I’ll always remember this story before deciding to ignore any warnings.
Not excusing the decision-making that led to this - but I’ve noticed myself that the scarcity of permits for some of these legendary hikes absolutely impacts decision-making. If this has been on your list for years, and you really don’t know when you’ll get another shot, you’ll be more willing to take risks you normally wouldn’t.
The permits need to be limited of course, I’m not suggesting otherwise. The only real solution here is internal. One good idea for situations where you may have to make a decision while emotional is to establish the go/no-go criteria before the emotions hit.
So for example, if pursuing hikes that have killed the unwary time and again, set some rules for when and why you ditch before you ever get the permit. Of course, then you have to stick with that pre-made decision for it to work.
I think another factor about some of these is how many regular (as in, not-outdoor-athlete) people do them every day. It gives an illusion of safety. I’ve done this hike - I’m a former rock climber, very comfortable with heights and exposure, and the cables felt recklessly unsafe to me. I really can’t believe more people don’t fall, and I’d recommend everyone use a harness and clip themselves to the cables.
Honestly between those two factors, the way our brains respond to scarcity / FOMO, and the illusion of safety caused by so much traffic…I think there are many people who believe they’d make a better call who would’ve actually done the same when it came down to it.
Man that’s sad as fuck. Can’t imagine that happening right in front of me. And I’m sure it’s just the way the article is written but does the dad come of kind of… chill… when talking about the whole thing? Seems like a character just telling a story in a movie.
Maybe I’m reading between the lines but all I could see was his grief. I’m a dad too though, so maybe that plays into it.
Why don’t people clip in? I get its like 5.4 aid climbing but walking and swapping your 2 anchors adds a trivial amount of time in order to not die IMO.
I wonder about that too. For context, I’ve done it, and I wouldn’t do it again without a harness and clipping in. It’s just such a trivially easy thing to do to protect yourself and the cables are not at all adequate for safety.
For me, I didn’t use one because I didn’t realize I’d want it. I knew a ton of people do it daily, knew there wasn’t a lot of discussion or use of harnesses, and I assumed I’d agree with everyone else. And I think for a lot of others there’s that element, plus not even really knowing how easy it is to use one. You certainly are stuck with your decision once you finally make it to the cables, lol.
Because you’d (a) need a harness; (b) have to know how to use it and use slings; © it’s not 5.4.
Many actual climbers descending this route do in fact use this, although for many that’s more about fear of chuckleheads fucking up than the actual descent - it’s class III but the wear on the rock makes it quite slippery in places.
A ranger told them there were storms in the forecast
Rohloff said. “I was like, ‘We have got to get down now, because we don’t want to be up here with any rain. It rolled in literally out of nowhere.’”
Storms forecast? Let’s scale up a slippery sheer granite cliff with no safety equipment. The level of stupidity here is truly astounding.
They even say that after Yellowstone put in its permit limit to 300 per day on the summit, incidents more than doubled because how hard the permits are to get causes more people to go up whether or not the weather is bad.
Also, important to note that weather in the mountains changes frequently and without warning. I do a lot of hiking myself, and I’ve gone into the mountains on days expecting absolute lashings of rain and got nothing, and more often I’ve gone on days where higher summits forecasts show clear or just in the clouds, and had to turn back because the storms and winds got so high.
Now even if I’ve planned a hike for weeks and the weather looks great, I’ll still double check before I drive up. If it’s just a bit of rain it’s usually not the end of the world. It’s when they say bad storms, flooding, lightning on the summit/winds above 70 mph where I’ll bail.
I don’t think it’s necessarily stupid and there were clearly a load of other people up there as well. Its just really shitty.
I could have made this mistake. Trying to make good of the lottery to hike with my daughter. Seeing all the other tourists tossing care to the wind would have kept my guard down.
Mountains create their own weather. It can even differ from valley to adjacent valley. Seeing clear skies doesn’t forecast the next hour but also doesn’t say turn around. We’ve all pushed the limits and gambled it just didn’t work out for them in the worst way.
This should be a reminder to the suburban family units that go on strenuous or even straight up dangerous hikes, carefree and letting their children and animals roam everywhere.
I’ve seen tourists kids just casually fooling around on a ridge hike with a sheer 500+ foot drop on either side of a like meter wide ridge with no barriers. Dogs gladly running into the brush which leads to said 500 foot drop.
This hiker chose to free solo an almost vertical wall and unfortunately paid the price. Mountains are dangerous. People regularly climb and fall off Morro rock and that’s literally just a rock, not even a mountain.
This hiker chose to free solo an almost vertical wall and unfortunately paid the price.
This is incorrect. One because it’s not “almost vertical” (it’s a 3rd class scramble) and two because she was not technically free soloing - she wasn’t rock climbing and the protection in this case was the cables. I acknowledge these distinctions may not matter to you but they matter when talking about why these accidents happen.
Aside from the "free-solo"ing of a dangerous but established NP trail with hand rails, I agree with the sentiment that casual hikers do not take the perils seriously. Goes double for parents.
This is one of the most heartbreaking stories I’ve heard in a long time.
News of an accidental death always brings out the amateur investigators who’ll confirm the stupidity of the victim.
It reassures us that death won’t come, because I’m careful. This goes double for firearms accidents.
I see people climbing these and that ladder thing in the sky across two rocks and it just does not compute in my brain. I have zero interest in even being near those items. People who do have a literal death wish.
See, what you gotta do is not fall.
Not true. Falling is harmless. What you’ve gotta do is not land.
True. Back in 2011 Mark Kelly fell for over 15 days straight. Not only did he survive, but he went on to win election as a Democrat for one of Arizona’s Senate seats twice!
Ahhhh. That’s genius.
The trick is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
I said “no means no” but Land wasn’t having it…it violated both my legs…
Apparently she hit her head during the fall, so in this case it was really the fall that killed her.
NPS needs to issue rain checks so people can make better decisions.
