Rockslide in Yosemite

Third natural "incident" in a National Park in just over two months

"A large slab of granite cracked loose from a cliff in Yosemite National Park early Wednesday [October 8] and crashed into the Curry Village resort with a thunderous roar, flattening tents and forcing hundreds of campers to run for their lives," reported Steve Rubenstein in a San Francisco Chronicle news story called "Rockslide Threatens Curry Village in Yosemite." The story includes photos and a map of the site.

He wrote about screaming schoolchildren, broken rock showering down, snapped trees, smashed cabin walls and a "plume of dust hundreds of feet in the air." The slide, in which the equivalent of 200 dump-truck loads of rock fell into Curry Village from more than half way up Glacier Point, occurred before 7:00 a.m. Glacier Point perches some 3,200 feet above the valley floor.

"Pandemonium" was the word used to describe the reactions of surprised and frightened park visitors, many awakened by the rocks thundering toward them. A smaller rockslide had occurred the previous day, and some cabins were evacuated then.

Wednesday's rockfall destroyed two of 180 the wooden cabins and five tent of the 427 tent cabins that, along with a hotel, comprise Curry Village. Three park visitors reportedly suffered cuts and other minor injuries. The Park Service ordered a complete evacuation of the area, and 1,005 people left the park.

"The falling rock in both slides came from the mountainside directly above Curry Village, about halfway up the granite wall between the valley floor and Glacier Point. Looking up from the valley floor Wednesday, one could see a large oblong patch of lighter granite where the chunk had broken loose. There was no word on when the rest of the camp would be reopened," Rubenstein continued.

He also quoted Gerald Wieczorek of the U.S. Geological Survey who said that rockslides "can occur as often as a dozen times a year," typically starting in fall. In July 1996, a 162,000-ton slab of granite broke off Glacier Point and fell about a mile east of Curry Village, where a resulting air blast downed over 500 trees, killed on man and injured four others, including one woman who became paralyzed.

I'm afraid I don't remember the 1996 calamity, but this one struck me because of recent incidents in two other national parks. On August 3, I posted an item about the overnight collapse of Wall Arch, the 12th-largest arch in Arches National Park near Moab, Utah. Two weeks later, I wrote about the breaching of a dam in a side canyon in the Grand Canyon National Park after up to 8 inches of rain fell.

I'm not an essentially superstitious person, but I do see that things often come in threes. When two national parks had such high-profile incidents in such a short time, I expected a third sometime in October. It took another seven weeks before the Yosemite rockslide, and I'm hoping that with three out of the way, nature will be kind to our treasured national parks and leave them be for a while.