[ad_1]
Rangers using booster equipment found the bodies of a man and a woman who fell this week from Taft Point in Yosemite National Park, a busy fortress located 3,500 feet above sea level. the Yosemite Valley.
Jamie Richards, a spokeswoman for Yosemite, announced Friday that a helicopter from the California Highway Patrol had helped the rangers remove the bodies.
CLICK HERE if you're having trouble viewing the photo gallery on your mobile device.
Both victims were about 300 meters from the edge of a steep cliff at Taft Point, near the end of Glacier Point Road, with breathtaking views of Yosemite Valley, El Capitan, and Yosemite Falls.
The authorities have not yet been able to identify the two victims or their deaths, she said.
"We have not yet determined what happened in this tragic incident," Richards said. "It will take us several days to find out more."
Taft Point has been one of Yosemite's iconic landmarks for over 100 years. Named in honor of President William Howard Taft, who visited it in 1909, this site has been the scene of countless photos over the decades, of proposals and even weddings nearby.
It is located approximately 3,500 feet above the Yosemite Valley – a vast distance of about two-thirds of a mile – above huge granite walls that overlook the roads and hotels below. below.
A relatively short hiking trail from Glacier Point Road leads to Taft Point, which has a metal guardrail at its most popular sighting point.
"There is a balustrade at the belvedere, but there are many places where you can go without railings," she said. "Yosemite is a place by wild nature."
Richards said the railing is intact. When asked if the couple might have fallen while talking about a photo or hiking on the edge of the cliffs, or if he had jumped voluntarily, she said that the survey was going to probably last several weeks and that the investigators had no witness.
Several visitors to the park noticed the bodies Wednesday night. They alerted the rangers, who determined that when darkness fell, it was too late to attempt to recover them from the steep sides of the cliff.
So far this year, "more than 10" people have died in Yosemite, Richards said. Typically, every year, dozens of people die or suffer life-threatening injuries, including heart attacks, car accidents, drowning, hikers or mountaineers who fall steeply downhill. she declared.
Put in context, 5 million people visit Yosemite each year.
Generally, when people die in the park, bodies are taken to coroners in nearby counties, but Yosemite officials conduct the investigation, as they do in the most recent case.
There have been several notable falls recently in Yosemite.
On June 2, two experienced mountaineers, 42-year-old Tim Klein of Palmdale and Jason Wells, 46, of Boulder, Colorado, died in a fall of about 1,000 feet from El Capitan, 39. huge granite wall located north of Yosemite. Valley.
A month earlier, 29-year-old Asish Penugonda from India, residing in New York City, died after slipping and falling back under the cables of the Half Dome while he was walking while A storm was approaching. Penugonda worked as a biochemist at Siemens Healthcare in New Milford, New Jersey.
Last month, Tomer Frankfurter, an 18-year-old Jerusalem resident, died to death while he was trying to take his picture near Nevada Fall. The young man was on a two-month trip to the United States before preparing to do his military service in Israel.
And in 2015, two men, Dean Potter, the world-famous combination pilot, and his friend Graham Hunt, died after jumping from Taft Point and struck a rocky outcropping at 100 mph while filming themselves.
The flight in Wingsuit involves people wearing suits with wings sewn between the arms, body and legs. This is a form of BASE-jumping, an acronym for parachuting buildings, antennas, spans or bridges and landforms such as Taft Point. BAS jumping and wingsuit flying are illegal in Yosemite.
"No one, except for Potter and Hunt, will really know what happened," concluded the park investigators in a report obtained by the Associated Press. "
Source link
