Travel -: How do you explain park deaths? You can't

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How do you explain park deaths? You can't Jul 25th 2011, 07:00 Why did they do it? Why would three people ignore posted signs and shouted warnings and climb over a metal barricade to stand on slippery rock 25 feet from a massive waterfall in Yosemite National Park? The woman and two men from a church group who did that last week can't answer. They were swept into 317-foot Vernal Fall and are presumed dead. Michael Ghiglieri can't answer, either. He still doesn't understand it, no matter how many times he has asked the question. And he has asked it many, many times. Ghiglieri, a 38-year veteran wilderness guide, is co-author of two books, "Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite" and "Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon," which describe every known fatality in those parks. He has spent 12 years examining the ways people have died there. He and his co-authors have concluded that it is almost always due to the victims' own poor judgment. Take, for example, what might be called "death by photo." People back up to the Grand Canyon to pose and fall in. They wade into a river at the top of a waterfall to pose and are swept away. They climb over guardrails to photograph a waterfall looking down over the lip, with the same result. One 21-year-old tourist from Ireland, after "drinking a lot of wine," posed for a photo pretending to fall into Upper Yosemite Falls, according to "Death in Yosemite." When the first shot didn't work out, his buddies asked him to pose again. He once again pretended to lose his balance. But this time, he really did. Some people died for a joke. "Death in Grand Canyon" describes a man who was walking with his young daughter along the Rim Trail when he decided to have a little fun: "He paused precariously and dramatically atop the wall. Then, facing his daughter on the path, he wind-milled his arms comically and said, 'Help, I'm falling …' "Then he jumped off backward." People attempt brutal hikes in extreme heat. They hike alone. They drink too little water or too much alcohol. They go rafting without wearing a life jacket. They go rock climbing alone, in sandals. They enter the Colorado River to cool off though they can't swim. But why am I writing "they"? It should probably be "I." Because my own poor judgment at the Grand Canyon one August day in 1973 nearly landed me in Ghiglieri's book. I didn't climb over a guardrail or disobey a posted sign. But if I'd thought about it, I would have realized that bushwhacking with a friend through the woods to an off-trail spot on the rim to catch the sunset was probably a bad idea.

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