Rock slide in Yosemite injures three, forces partial closure
The slide is the second in two days at the national park. About 1,000 people, including visiting school children, were evacuated.
Tom Trujillo / Associated Press
SACRAMENTO -- A major rock slide this morning at Yosemite National Park injured three visitors, destroyed more than half a dozen cabins and prompted park officials to evacuate popular Curry Village as a precaution.
The slide let loose about 7 a.m. more than halfway up the 3,200-foot face of Glacier Point, which looms above the tent cabins and concession services on the valley floor below.
An 1,800-cubic-yard slab of rock cartwheeled down the cliff, shattered and sent boulders and fist-sized granite shrapnel spraying toward the edge of Curry Village and its more than 500 tent cabins, regular cabins and hotel rooms.
Park Ranger Erik Skindrud said about 1,000 visitors had to be evacuated in the slide's aftermath, many of them visiting school children and their chaperons.
One boy suffered a head laceration and had to get stitches at the valley's medical clinic. Two other people received treatment after fleeing the rock fall. A young child was treated for an asthma attack, and an adult suffered cuts when she fell, Skindrud said.
Five tent cabins and two cabins with solid sides were destroyed, he said.
The rock fall was the second in two days at Glacier Point. Tuesday afternoon, a smaller slide sent boulders cascading toward Curry Village, destroying one tent cabin.
This morning's slide spread more fear, damage and debris. The amount of rock released was roughly equal to a dozen municipal garbage trucks parked side by side.
Among the evacuees were 80 elementary students and adult chaperons from Montessori Center School in Goleta. Nelda Nutter, head of the school, said the students were milling about or heading to breakfast when the slide occurred. A boy from the school was among the injured, she said, and at least one tent cabin that had been occupied by the group was damaged by the slide.
"The reaction afterward ranged from tears to some boys who said, 'That was cool!' " she said. "I'm just thrilled that nobody was seriously injured."
Park officials used a helicopter to get a closer look at the rock face Tuesday afternoon and again this morning, after the bigger slide. No findings have been announced.
But concern about potential slides was great enough to prompt park officials to evacuate visitors from Curry Village and shut down its services until authorities are confident that no further danger is imminent.
"To do this kind of damage, it had to have been a significant amount of rock," Skindrud said. "Blocks of granite came off that wall."
Glacier Point has been the most active rockfall zone in the park for more than a decade. In 1996, a massive slide killed a park visitor and flattened more than 500 trees. A few years later, a big slide killed Peter Terbush, a young climber who saved a friend's life by holding onto his climbing rope and refusing to flee in the face of boulders cascading down the cliff face.
"Rock slides and rock falls are part of the natural history of Yosemite, one of the processes that created the valley," Skindrud said. "It's nothing out of the ordinary, its something we have to live with. Today's incident was a little more dangerous to human life than other previous incidents."
eric.bailey@latimes.com
