Rockfalls Close Yosemite Cabins
Affordable Sites Increasingly Scarce

By Ashley Surdin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 22, 2008

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif., Nov. 21 -- The windows of the moss-covered wood cabins are dark now, the white canvas tents still. Rows of benches sit like ghosts before the amphitheater, its summer music now hushed by windy gusts and swirling leaves.

Such emptiness is unusual here in Curry Village, a popular mountainside campground that houses up to 2,000 campers in eastern Yosemite Valley. This time last year, hundreds of schoolchildren played on its black-oak- and ponderosa-pine-covered grounds.

But that was before 17,000 tons of granite fell last month from Glacier Point, the 3,000-foot-high cliff towering over the village. On Oct. 8, after a small release the afternoon before, a rain of rock hurled down the cliff and snapped trees like pencils, pulverized tents and heaved a boulder the size of an SUV on top of a cabin. The slide injured three people and nearly hit a group of sixth-graders who had left for breakfast minutes before.

The near-tragedy, coupled with the increasing frequency of rockfalls over the past decade from Glacier Point, prompted park officials on Friday to permanently shutter 233 cabins and tent cabins, 43 concession housing units, as well as other structures, including restrooms, a shower house and linen huts. No other rockfall has affected the park's housing so dramatically in over a century.

"We're looking at the rockfall events over the last several years in Curry Village, and based on the scientific analysis and the risk that we feel is there for visitors, we decided to close certain units at Curry Village," park spokesman Scott Gediman said. He noted that the majority of the closures are those nearest to Glacier Point.

The closures diminish Curry Village's accommodations by a third and are another blow to lodging availability for the nearly 3 million annual park visitors, most of whom cluster in the seven-mile stretch of Yosemite Valley.

Housing supply has always been dwarfed by demand in this much-beloved Rhode Island-size park, where people can raft and rock climb and ice skate, depending on the time of year.

But the lodging shortage heightened after a record-breaking New Year's Day flood in 1997 that wiped out roads, bridges and nearly 300 of what were then Yosemite Valley's more than 1,500 units. Reconstruction followed but was slowed and then halted by litigation with environmental groups that hoped to protect the park's historical resources. Restoration plans were made and rejected, and now no construction is allowed without going through a cumbersome review process.

That has fed a growing sense among visitors -- particularly those who cannot afford the $400-a-night accommodations of the Ahwahnee, the park's celebrity-studded luxury hotel -- that they are being squeezed out of the crown jewel of America's parks.

"What we're hearing nowadays is that, you know, we're trying to keep people out of the park. We're trying to get rid of camp things. We have this overall goal of getting rid of campgrounds and just have the Ahwahnee," Gediman said. The truth, he said, is that "we haven't been able to rebuild rooms at [Yosemite Lodge at the Falls], and now with Curry Village, we're losing a lot of accommodations."

"There are fewer and fewer opportunities for people to spend the night in Yosemite Park," he said.

Since 1996, rockfalls from Glacier Point have killed two people, paralyzed one and injured dozens more. The largest in the park's 107-year history occurred in 1996, when more than 80,000 tons slid to the valley floor in Happy Isles. The force of the slide produced 125 mph winds, bent steel beams and plowed a pine tree into a nature center. One person was killed.

Some scientists say the crumbling along Glacier Point is connected to previous construction and wastewater runoff from visitors atop the cliff. Chester F. "Skip" Watts, chairman of the geology department at Radford University in Virginia, who has studied the area, said this helps explains why there are more injuries, fatalities and property damage in the area than in any other part of the park.

"It is an environment that's active, and it's also very, very popular," said Watts, who applauded Friday's closures. "This isn't just anywhere in the park; this is a place where millions of people come."

The notion is contested by Greg Stock, the park's geologist of three years, who says the research has not included rockfalls in other areas of the park. If it had, he said, it would show that what is happening in Curry Village and elsewhere along Glacier Point is not unique.

"We see that exact sort of behavior in other areas of the valley, where no infrastructure is involved," said Stock, noting the iconic Half Dome as an example. And any wastewater runoff is minuscule, he said, compared with the precipitation that pours water through the cracks of Glacier Point.

Some have criticized the park for not closing the cabins sooner, but park officials say there is a fine line between trying to keep people safe -- something it cannot guarantee -- and allowing them to enjoy the park.

News of the closures was welcomed by Timothy Engler, a veteran visitor of Yosemite and one of the few padding by Curry Village this week. Safety considerations aside, Engler said, the park is far too crowded and, because of that, is losing its natural beauty.

"In a way, it's a good thing," said Engler, 66. "They need to limit the amount of people who come in here."

"We remember the days when you could come up here on a Friday night . . . and get a campsite after you chase the bears away," Engler said. "You can't do that at all now."