A rock the size of a golf ball could be fatal, [said Ken Yager, president of the Yosemite Climbing Assn.], and he estimated Thursday’s fall was “10 times bigger” than the colossal chunk that broke off a day earlier....
On Wednesday, a sheet of granite the height of a 13-story building — about 130 feet long, 65 feet wide and in some sections 10 feet thick — separated from the rock face and dropped [1,800 feet] to the base of El Capitan, officials said....
“Granite rocks, any kind of rock, is more dynamic than people realize — pieces are falling off, they’re constantly changing,” Yager said. “Over the course of the years, these features gradually loosen…until one day, it’s just a catastrophic release.”
September 29, 2017
"Rockfall at Yosemite's El Capitan '10 times bigger' than slide that killed tourist a day earlier, witness says."
The L.A. Times reports.
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Sometimes the sky really is falling.
Well that was pretty profound.............
Great singer. Beautiful woman. Wingnut.
From the comments, it was Donald Trump & global warming that caused it.
Not forever, including granite.
In 2003 New Hampshire's Old Man in the Mountain sighed, and gave way.
Global warming probably.
Trump.
Just an opportunity for a fearless climber to blaze a new trail over the granite face, using only fingers, toes, and penis for grip.
a friends kids just climbed Half Dome. I won't share this with her...
On topic. all those crevices that the climbers use get created by the same process. And they only get bigger. One day, Stuff happens...
a friends kids just climbed Half Dome. I won't share this with her...
In climbing, timing is everything.
“Granite rocks, any kind of rock, is more dynamic than people realize — pieces are falling off, they’re constantly changing,
Especially with climbers hammering anchors into them thousands of times a year. One group was reported to be just above the rockfall both times. One members was quoted as how lucky they were. I' hope he's considering if their actions helped create the fall.
You can't blame Obama. He only said he'd stop the oceans from rising, not fix big rocks.
Come on! They lost the chance to blame Global Warming. (Maybe they did but I didn't read the article)
Granite formations are subject to the freezing, cracking, thawing and then shattering or sheeting effect. The extremely cold, icy and snowy winter we just had and are getting ready to have again (Mammoth, Ca has already received snow) will continue the cycle. Which has been going on for hundreds of thousands of years.
Or...like Rick said, perhaps the falls are helped along by the climbers chiseling away at the rock face.
In anycase. Who cares? Don't climb the thing. Just stand back and admire the strength and perseverance of Mother Nature.
I can hardly wait for President Trump's hilarious GIF of El Cap's rock slide falling on Hillary collapsing getting into her van. ;-)
“Granite rocks, any kind of rock, is more dynamic than people realize — pieces are falling off, they’re constantly changing,"
The natural world is a dangerous place and it comes at you fast.
What, no reference to "Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite"?
Although the most common accidents described here seem to involve doing stupid things above the waterfalls, plus some lethal photo-ops.
And, while granite is a fine metamorphic rock, somehow it always makes me think of tombstones. Which always made me wonder why many want countertops made of tombstone-material. In any case, apparently granite isn't always a "rock of ages."
https://www.amazon.com/Off-Wall-Yosemite-Michael-Ghiglieri/dp/0970097360/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1506693352&sr=8-1&keywords=death+in+yosemite
https://www.rockofages.com/
On the topic of AGW, it seems to me that AGW would decrease, not increase the likelihood of rock falls.
The major weather force in rock fracturing is hard freezes and then warming. The same AGW activity that lessens (in their fevered minds) snowfall, would decrease rock fracturing.
what am I missing?
Nature is always trying to kill you.
Get my rocks off the mountain, and roll 'em on down the hill
Let's get a little funky with Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show, the lyrics and dancing are hilarious.
Rocks Off
Some men need some killer weed, some men need cocaine
Some men need some cactus juice, to purify the brain
Some men need two women, some need alcohol
Everybody needs a little something, but Lord I need it all
To get my rocks off, get my rocks off
Get my rocks off the mountain, and roll 'em on down the hill
I may do you one time, and I may do you more
I may turn you into something, that you ain't ready for
I might want your body, and I might want your bread
I might want your momma to come visit me instead
Sometimes I dream of chicks, to bring me ever lasting joy
Sometimes I dream of animals, sometimes I dream of boys
Sometimes I kill the living, sometimes I raise the dead
Sometimes I say just screw it all, and crawl back into bed
@ Drill SGT.
You aren't missing anything. To the global warmist religious adherents everything is a symptom of global warming or climate change as it is now called because it really isn't warming.
No hurricanes. Too many hurricanes. Global Warming.
Ice sheets retreating. Ice sheets growing. Too much rain. Drought. Glaciers shrinking. Glaciers growing. Women with little boobs. Women with big boobs. (ok maybe not that last one, but I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't try to link breasts to global warming. I'll leave that to Laslo)
This contradictory list of reasons we should all be setting our hair on fire and living in caves to stop global warming/climate change is why no one believes them anymore....other than the true religious cultists who will believe anything.
Exfoliated batholiths gonna exfoliate
Drill SGT, that's the change part of climate change.
Like weather, the climate is always changing, just on a different timescale. Thus the earth has been warming, ever since it stopped cooling during the last ice age. climate change is just a term of art to weasel out of the fact that AGW isn't happening at anywhere near the rate the perfect models predicted
As regards anthropogenic global warming, yawn, wake me up when it's possible to live year round on Greenland using nothing more than medieval farming technology. They did it for four centuries starting a thousand years ago.
Every day, mountains waste away until, one day, they're gone.
I remember from my mountain backpacking days being struck by the fact that, "Damn, these things are falling down."
A group of us rode motorcycles along the PCH last year. Side jaunt to Yosemite. There were several climbers sleeping while pinned to the side of the mountain. Amazing.... chilling.
Global warming.... hell yeah, it's global warming. That's why there were no fallen rock piles at the base before 1950..... right?
Certainly it's global warming. During the ice age, the Sierras were covered with one giant ice cap and Yosemite Valley in particular was choked with ice thousands of feet thick. Very few rockfalls off the valley walls could reach the bottom of the valley then.
This story is absurd. Everyone knows that Nature doesn't change unless people screw with it. That's why we preserve it in National Parks and Wildernesses.
So who's going to glue all that rock back up there?
This never happened when Yosemite Sam was in charge.
Everything is tending toward getting flatter. That's geology plus gravity. Every waterfall and cliff and mountain and lake and coastline is a temporary feature. (Grammarians, please tell me how that sentence should read - "every" is singular, but "and" should mean that I use a plural form of the verb - but it sounds so wrong to say "are temporary features"!)
The term for the study of surface features is "geomorphology" - from the roots "geo" and "morph," meaning EARTH and CHANGE, for gosh sakes.
I refuse to panic. I will remain utterly fearless in the presence of granite outcrops and continue my daily routine. Keep calm and carry on.
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