Althouse: "It is understood Andrew had finished dinner and gone to take pictures of the sunset at a beauty spot called Collado Jermoso."

August 4, 2009

"It is understood Andrew had finished dinner and gone to take pictures of the sunset at a beauty spot called Collado Jermoso."

A 17-year-old boy falls 3,000 feet to his death.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...: Damn it, Althouse. I was just smiling fondly at the photos of you and Meade, loveinly wedded, then chuckling at the absurd Bill Clinton/Kim Jong Il photo, and glossing over the trash island, then you have to go throw a sad story at me and ruin it all.; 8/4/09, 4:22 PM
TWM said...: That's a long fricken way to fall. Poor kid.; 8/4/09, 4:32 PM
dbp said...: Never walk along the edge of a cliff while looking through a camera viewfinder. That is the lesson I would guess we can draw from this sadness.; 8/4/09, 5:20 PM
Big Mike said...: I think you summed it up, dbp.; 8/4/09, 5:43 PM
Laura(southernxyl) said...: It's an awful thing to have a kid growing up. You can't keep them at home wrapped in cotton wool, but you have to know that when you let go of them some stupid random thing can happen and take them away from you forever. I feel so sorry for his family.; 8/4/09, 6:22 PM
Simon Kenton said...: I controlled my apprehension about the kids and cliffs pretty well. They got to throw rocks off thousand-foot drops, roll boulders, leap off 60-foot crags into lakes. Controlled it, except for a walk on top of an Alaskan glacier near the base of Mt. Fairweather. Meandering streams of meltwater wandered across the surface of the ice, angled parabolically, and then plunged into openings shaped like morning glories, openings with a gradually steepening wet-ice surface that dropped down through all the shades of ultramarine, to blue, to blackness that cloaked the grinding boulders where the substrate met the base of the ice, hundreds of feet below the surface. You would slip, skid, flail, plunge into a narrowing ice chute, and lodge somewhere down in the throat, arms pinned, calling for help that could never get down to you, until the falling icewater and hypothermia made an end of you. The kids had to see the glacier (and were lucky to see a strange, bluish "glacier bear" on it) but I could not stand to let them get too close to these slick portals.; 8/4/09, 7:43 PM
Laura(southernxyl) said...: "You would slip, skid, flail, plunge into a narrowing ice chute, and lodge somewhere down in the throat, arms pinned, calling for help that could never get down to you, until the falling icewater and hypothermia made an end of you."

And you could see all of that in your mind's eye, couldn't you, as you choked out "Stay away from the edge!" and your kids rolled their eyes.; 8/4/09, 8:04 PM
bagoh20 said...: Congratulations, another slow agonizing life avoided.

I would hope he snapped a really good shot on the way down and it was a digital, because it's frustrating to wait for that damn developing when you know you really nailed it.; 8/4/09, 8:17 PM
Methadras said...: Poor kid. What a way to go.; 8/4/09, 8:51 PM
Anonymous said...: That's a long fricken way to fall.

Not that the distance really mattered. If it had been, say, 500 feet, the outcome would've been the same.

Peter; 8/4/09, 9:02 PM
NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...: Damn.

Well, stay the hell away from the edge in the mountains of Colorado.

Damn.; 8/4/09, 9:03 PM
John Stodder said...: The exact same thing almost happened to me on Yosemite's Half Dome. I climbed up there, stood near the edge, put my SLR camera up to my face--and immediately lost all perspective and then my balance. Luckily, my brother was there to yank me back.Profoundly scary. That poor kid. Hopefully he lost consciousness during the fall.; 8/4/09, 9:15 PM
Larry J said...: That's a long fricken way to fall.

Not that the distance really mattered. If it had been, say, 500 feet, the outcome would've been the same.

As we paratroopers used to say, "It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the end."

Also, "You can fall for miles and not get hurt. It's the last quarter inch that kills you."; 8/5/09, 8:11 AM
Anonymous said...: "It is understood Andrew had finished dinner and gone to take pictures of the sunset at a beauty spot called Collado Jermoso."
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Julie
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