Teen hiker is latest to die after Yosemite fall

A teenager died Thursday after suffering head injuries sustained when he fell four days earlier at Yosemite National Park, making him the latest victim in an increasingly deadly year for the park.

Kao Kue, 17, was taken by air ambulance to Doctor's Medical Center in Modesto after falling on the park's popular Mist Trail on Sunday. He died Thursday, the Stanislaus County coroner's department confirmed, though a cause of death was not released. Park officials wouldn't comment on the incident because Kue was a minor.

Though Kue's death won't count toward the number of fatalities at Yosemite this year because he did not die inside the park, the number of fatalities at Yosemite is higher than it normally is at this time of year. Yosemite usually sees five or six deaths by the end of July, park spokeswoman Kari Cobb said. This year, there have been 14, most recently a 26-year-old San Ramon woman who fell while trying to descend Half Dome on July 31.

The number also accounts for incidents that occur in the park, such as heart attacks, car accidents and deaths attributed to natural causes.

Cobb was quick to point out that though the numbers are high for this point in the calendar, it doesn't mean 2011 is the park's deadliest year. Fifteen people died in Yosemite in 2010, and if the remainder of 2011 goes by without incident, Cobb said, the year's total would be lower. Even if another fatality should occur by the end of the year, the 2011 total wouldn't be abnormally high, she said.

Park officials have attributed the uptick in fatalities to a general increase in visitors as well as intensified water conditions caused by a larger-than-normal snowpack, raising water levels and lowering temperatures in the park's rivers and streams. Cobb stressed that visitors should be aware of the risks when hiking in the park and take appropriate precautions.

"Their safety and the risks associated with hiking the park are completely up to them to mitigate," Cobb said. "It's up to them to make the appropriate decisions to make them safe. We have signs on our most popular trails that tell visitors about some of the risks, and it is up to them to heed them."

The Mist Trail was also the site of a fatal incident in May, when a man drowned after he slipped on the trail and fell into the Merced River. In June, three hikers died when they climbed over a guardrail and were swept over the park's popular Vernal Fall, which is at the end of the Mist Trail.

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Yosemite seeks to remove Curry Village cabins

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — Since an avalanche of boulders smashed part of Yosemite National Park's Curry Village in 2008 and sent school children running for their lives, the historic wooden cabins have been frozen in time behind a temporary barricade.

Now park officials are seeking permission to remove the century-old lodging and a few other historic homes to keep visitors from trespassing to view the structures, which are slowly deteriorating because of the elements, vandals and nesting animals.

"It's become an attractive nuisance," said park spokesman Scott Gediman. "If there's a fence there and some reason to go over there they will."

An environmental assessment released Tuesday calls the area a "major risk to public health and safety for visitors, as well as park employees who patrol the site."

The environmental review of 72 buildings in an area below the sheer granite face of Glacier Point recommends removing the cabins, salvaging the materials and allowing the area to return to its natural state.

Other options under review include keeping some of the most historic structures maintained and in place until they can be moved elsewhere, or keeping just those that represent different architectural styles. Both plans would still expose park employees to danger.

Moving the oldest cabins to other locations raises other issues by creating landscapes that are historically inaccurate, Gediman said.

What to do with this large chunk of the popular Yosemite lodging area has been an issue since October 2008, when the equivalent of 570 dump-truck loads of rock hit 17 cabins where youngsters on a field trip were staying. Nobody was seriously injured, but it was the second rock avalanche of that year, and a reminder that the beautiful Yosemite is still a wild and sometimes dangerous place.

An Associated Press investigation found subsequently that park officials had known about the potential danger for years. Park officials eventually declared one-third of the popular family campground beneath Glacier Point a "rockfall hazard zone" and fenced it off.

Since 2008 the rows of charming 1920s-era wooden cabins nestled amid boulders, incense cedar and black oak have been awaiting their fate as prescribed by the National Historic Preservation Act.

The public can weigh in on the environmental assessment report through Sept. 9.

Rockfall is the single biggest natural phenomenon shaping Yosemite's dramatic, glacier-carved granite walls such as the iconic El Capitan and Half Dome.

Since 1999, 20 of the structures at Curry Village have been directly hit by boulders, and many more have been damaged by flying rocks. In August 2009 more than 300 guests at the park's majestic Ahwahnee Hotel were evacuated after tumbling boulders from the 1,600-foot Royal Arches formation landed in the parking lot. Dust from the avalanche temporarily obscured views of Half Dome.

Since 1857, at least 535 rockfalls in Yosemite Valley have killed 14 people and injured 62, more than at any other national park. Yosemite Valley is easily the most collapse-prone place in a park that receives over 4 million visitors a year.

Determining the future of the section of Curry Village that is in the rockfall zone has been tedious compared with the loss of nearly 300 tent cabins during the floods of 1997. Those cabins were not considered historic, so park officials demolished them.

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Yosemite falls: Body recovered by authorities

The body of Yosemite falls hiker Hormiz David, 22, of Modesto has been recovered by Yosemite National Park rangers and a search and rescue team, authorities said Saturday.

David was one of three hikers who slipped over the edge of the 317-foot Vernal Falls on July 19. His body was discovered around 1 p.m. Friday in the Merced River, some 240 feet from the base of the Yosemite falls.

The bodies of his companions, Ninos Yacoub, 27, of Turlock and Ramina Badal, 21, of Manteca remain missing.

The trio had climbed over a guardrail before they were swept over the falls. Every day for almost three weeks, search and rescue teams have combed a three-quarter-mile stretch of river between Vernal Falls Footbridge and the base of Vernal Falls, Yosemite spokeswoman Keri Cob said. The section is one of the most rugged in the Merced River, with high water levels that initially prevented teams from approaching the river's steep bank.

The water level has receded since the hikers disappeared, with the rate of flow decreasing from 1,000 to about 500 cubic feet per second, Cobb said. This allowed teams to conduct a shoreline search and find David's body.

As summer progresses and less snowmelt feeds into the water, teams will be able to search closer to the banks of the river. It will be safe for them to dive when the water flow drops to about 60 cubic feet per second, Cobb said.

It took swift-water personnel about 4-1/2 hours to lift the body out of the water with special rigging that stretched across the river. The Mist Trail at the top of Vernal Falls will be closed until noon today and intermittently as the search for Yacoub and Badal continues.

The trail is one of the most popular in the park. Water levels in the area are still high and park officials are warning visitors to exercise extreme caution.

"What visitors need to realize when they come to Yosemite is they're responsible for knowing the safety concerns in the area, and they need to make appropriate decisions to keep themselves safe," Cobb said.

This year marks the highest number of deaths in Yosemite in recent memory, which could be due to the high volume of visitors and fast-moving rivers that are swollen from an especially heavy snowpack. A hiker fell to her death from Half Dome on July 31; two hikers drowned in the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir on June 29; and a hiker slipped and fell into the Merced River on the Mist Trail on May 13.

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14th death this year at Yosemite National Park

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — A woman slipped to her death Sunday while descending Half Dome in the rain, the latest accident at Yosemite National Park in a year that is breaking records for the deadliest in recent history.

Fourteen people have died so far this year, including three who were swept over Vernal Fall two weeks ago while taking photographs upstream in the Merced River. In 2007, seven people were killed at the park, the most in any recent year until this one.

One factor in the high number of deaths is a record snowfall that has created treacherous snowmelt, swelling streams and rivers at a time of year when nature in Yosemite is supposed to be relatively tranquil.

For Haley LaFlamme, 26, it likely was the unseasonable rain that brewed on the day her group of four secured a rare permit to ascend the enormous, smooth granite dome, the park's iconic feature. They were among a group of about 20 hikers who were braving the trip to the summit despite the wet conditions, slippery granite and distant lightning and thunder.

The permits limit traffic on the popular 8.5-mile climb. LaFlamme was using the cables that park officials install during the hiking season to help with the steep and sometimes slippery footing up the final pitch of the granite dome.

At about 11 a.m. people in the park began to send messages on Twitter about a raging thunder storm with rain. At noon, Yosemite's emergency communication center received a 911 call reporting a hiker had fallen at the bottom of the cables, where the granite trail becomes less steep and the cables end. Cobb says LaFlamme fell 600 feet from the shoulder. She was dead at the scene.

Between 2006 and 2010, 38 people died in the park and 1,225 had to be rescued at a cost of more than $3 million. Nearly 4 million people visit the park every year.

Most of those who get themselves in trouble in Yosemite are day hikers who are unprepared for the challenges and changing conditions of the wilderness, according to Search and Rescue records at Yosemite.

By far the single biggest age group of people who get into trouble is young adults ages 20 to 29, records show. The second largest: those over 60.

The allure of the park's treacherous features combined with a population of tourists more accustomed to Disneyland than the great outdoors can contribute to a false sense of security.

"A lot of people who visit Yosemite aren't necessarily familiar with nature," said park spokeswoman Kari Cobb. "They are really out of their element and may not understand the force of nature and what they may encounter in nature."

The three people swept over the 317-foot falls last month apparently didn't realize the upstream pool in which they were wading for a photo had a strong current running underneath. The bodies of Ramina Badal, 21, of Manteca; Hormiz David, 22, of Modesto; and 27-year-old Ninos Yacoub Turlock are still trapped somewhere in the raging Merced River.

The trio ignored warning signs by climbing a barricade to take a photo, then lost footing on the slippery granite bottom.

"If the trail isn't closed, people tend to take that as a source of information: Wouldn't they tell us not to do it if it were dangerous?" said psychologist Paul Price, a professor of psychology at Fresno State.

The last person to fall and die on Half Dome was also from San Ramon. Majoj Kumar died in June 2009. The hikers who witnessed the fall were so frightened that 40 people refused to move and had to be rescued from the dome, Cobb said.

In 2007 Hirofumi Nohara slipped on the cables and died. Two other deaths on Half Dome — Jennifer Bettles in 2007 and Emily Sandal in 2006 — occurred when the cables were down.

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