Thursday, July 21, 2011

Sad story, but come on...

I confess that I waste plenty of time clicking on various headlines on line --although many I am willing to ignore. Just clicked one on about three hikers getting swept over a waterfall in Yosemite, and it intrigued me. When I went to Yellowstone a few years back, there was a book (that I should have bought as I've been thinking about it ever since) about the dumb things Park visitors do to get themselves injured and killed. In a visitors center, I even watched a video of people thinking they are in petting zoos and trying to  "relate" to wild animals such as bears and bison. Really dumb things including trying to take the children's photo with a wild animal.

The worst one was a few years back and the headline was something like "woman falls into Grand Canyon" and it involved a 50-year old woman (I say her age thinking she should have known better) and someone was taking her photo with the Canyon in the background. The photographer kept telling her to back up, back up, back up until she backed up one step too far and fell in the Canyon and was killed.

Today's story was along those same lines. Three day visitors to Yosemite climbed a public path to a 300 foot waterfall which is about 30 feet from where the water goes over the falls. The three climb over the guard rail with other people yelling at them it's dangerous, and these three GET IN THE WATER! And then they are washed over the falls, and now the rangers are searching for them. So sad, and so preventable.

I don't get it. Did they think they'd go wading? Sit on the edge of the waterfall and dangle their legs over?

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