Yosemite is Full of Unknowns

Late snowpack can mean deep trouble even for veteran visitors.

by Diane Marcum
Fresno Bee - July 1, 2005

Sun-blushed hikers lunch at picnic tables next to banks of snow. Waterfalls thunder and there are lakes where no lakes were before. It's an unusual beauty. While not exactly Christmas in July, it is at most early spring in the high Sierra this summer as a deep snowpack melts slowly.

Barbara Sirutis of San Diego and nephew Doug Sirutis, 14, of Deland, Fla., walk through a snowdrift on the trail to Cathedral Lake near Tuolumne Meadows. Mark Crosse / The Fresno Bee

But the unique conditions are taking a toll at one of the nation's most popular national parks.

Even experienced hikers who think they know Yosemite's high country are running into trouble. It's easy to lose trails when they're covered by snow. Unseen snow bridges can collapse. People searching for a safe place to cross a swift stream can get disoriented.

Search and Rescue in Yosemite usually responds to an average of 193 calls a year. The total for last year was 216. This year, with the busy season just starting, the number of calls already stands at 79, the bulk of them over the past month. There have been more than a dozen incidents in the past two weeks alone, including one death and one man who hasn't been found.

Rangers say that perhaps more alarming than the numbers is the type of people running into trouble.

"The common thread between a lot of them is that if anyone should be able to navigate the high Sierra it should be these people. They're doing the right things. They're prepared," said Adrienne Freeman, a park spokeswoman.

"The word that we have to get out there is that even if you think you know what you're doing, even if you think you know Yosemite — you don't know it this year. Be ready for things to be different."

Michael Ficery, 51, an experienced backpacker, has been missing for almost two weeks. Other backpackers saw his old gray backpack sitting at the side of a trail near Hetch Hetchy Reservoir on June 19, and figured someone was just answering nature's call in the woods. But when they passed the same backpack on their way down two days later, they called rangers.

"We found his equipment at the snowline. That tells me he looked at it, and didn't want to travel through. He tried to find a way around," said Christopher Kuvlesky, a ranger in the Hetch Hetchy area. At first authorities were optimistic Ficery would soon be found. He fit the profile of someone who makes it back.

"His passions were hiking, backpacking and cycling. He was in shape and he knew what he was doing. He had a map and plenty of water and no physical or personal red flags," Freeman said.

The missing-persons fliers that pepper desks across Yosemite show a photograph of a man who even sitting in a living room lounge chair wore thick hiking socks and boots.

But on June 28 — after a full-scale, five-day search with hundreds of people, dogs and helicopters — search efforts for Ficery were scaled back because the risk to searchers outweighed the odds of finding him.

"The searchers were coming back and saying they couldn't find places to cross creeks full of all the runoff. They were going two miles and finding no place to cross," Kuvlesky said. "The amount of water is incredible, and it's 32 [to] 34 degrees."

Freeman went up in one of the helicopter searches. At first she was struck by the grandeur of ice and snow fields, waterfalls and rivers, and then she got depressed.

"We searched 140 square miles. It's a lot of space and a lot of obstacles," she said.

The same week Ficery was reported missing, a man died climbing Lembert Dome, a popular day-hiking trail from Tuolumne Meadows.

"He was mid-50s, good health and totally prepared to be hiking," Freeman said.

On the way back down, he took a different route than his family and never made it back to the car. The family called rangers and a hasty search found his body 160 feet below where rangers think he may have slipped.

No one saw him fall. No one can say for sure what happened.

"But the thought went through, could there have still been water from melting ice on those rocks?" Freeman said.

The same week, searchers found the abandoned camp of a British man who had an overdue wilderness permit.

A ranger remembered running into the man and that the man had argued when the ranger tried to turn him back from the part of the John Muir Trail he intended to hike.

A day later, park officials found out the man was alive when he started e-mailing friends from outside the park.

"He got lost and couldn't make it to camp. He spent a cold night in the woods and hiked out," Freeman said. "We can laugh about that one now because he's alive. But it could have been different. He spent a very cold night out there."

Rounding out the list of near misses is a spate of swift-water rescues, including a pair of teens on a graduation celebration outing who slipped on wet rocks, and a family with children floating down a river that wasn't open for floating. Their raft flipped over. In both cases, they managed to get to an island before the icy, strong water claimed them.

"But they all could have died," Freeman said.

Later, on a summer afternoon, just minutes from Freeman's Yosemite Valley office, Leslie Pedreiro, 14, and her sister Anaestelle Pedreiro, 13, scrambled up a large rock on the edge of the Merced River.

There was a small calm spot of water in front of the rock but white foam swirled around the other sides.

Both girls slipped. Anaestelle was caught by her father. Leslie lay across the rock like Garfield the cat splayed on a car window, until finally dropping into the calm water.

Before they were on top of the rock they didn't think about how much faster the river was running this year.

"Now I'm thinking about it," said a damp, shivering Leslie. "I didn't know I was going to slip."

In the high country, John and Barbara Sirutis from San Diego started a backpack trip with their two nephews from Florida.

Within a mile they had run into snowdrifts.

John Sirutis of San Diego carries an ice ax on a backpacking trip with his family to Cathedral Lake because of the amount of snow he thought he might encounter. Mark Crosse / The Fresno Bee

John carried an ice ax and said this was nothing new for a former Northwesterner such as himself.

"But I can see how it would cause trouble for people who are used to only being here in July. Experienced in summertime California doesn't necessarily mean experienced in snow," he said.

At Tenaya Lake, Ed and Pam Ashram of Lake Forest steered their canoe past partially submerged picnic tables. Earlier they had posed for snapshots in their swimming suits throwing snowballs at each other.

"I can't believe the Fourth of July is around the corner," said Ed Ashram, who's been visiting Yosemite for 30 years.

Elvira Andersen, 10, from Copenhagen, Denmark, plays with her teddy bear on a partially submerged picnic table. She was vacationing with her family in Yosemite at Tenaya Lake near Tioga Pass. Ed and Pam Ashram glide by in a kayak in the background. Mark Crosse / The Fresno Bee

"I've never seen the water so high. We saw a couple of waterfalls just alongside the road which were huge. We picnicked next to a snow bank." Pam Ashram said she wasn't surprised that even seasoned hikers were finding trouble.

"You have to respect the power of the river and the rocks," she said. "There's snow and ice, rocks are slippery, and every creek is running crazy. Look around. Things are different this year."