Grace Rohloff was an athlete who navigated dangerously narrow trails to Angels Landing in Zion National Park, hiked through the Grand Canyon, and traversed mountains in Sedona. Her father, Jonathan Rohloff, was often by her side.
Half Dome in Yosemite National Park was on their wish list.
Rohloff was thrilled once they received approval from the National Park Lottery System for her and her father to make the 25-kilometer hike to the summit on July 13. But what was planned as a fun adventure took a disastrous turn when she lost her footing on the rope system that leads from the trail to the summit and fell about 60 meters down the mountain.
Officials told her father that she probably died immediately.
“She lived every moment of her life to the fullest,” said Jonathan Rohloff. “People called her Superwoman and that's exactly what she was. She was incredible and when she set her mind to something, there was no one to tell her not to do it or stop her from doing it.”
The death of the 20-year-old, first reported by SFGATE, has raised renewed concerns in regards to the safety of hikes up Half Dome, where at the very least 10 people have died within the last decade. The majority of those deaths occurred when hikers navigated the cables. In many cases the steep granite surface was slippery after people fell within the rain.
Jonathan Rohloff is pushing for safety improvements to the cables that he believes could have saved his daughter's life.
The current rope system consists of wood planks roughly every three meters. Between these planks, hikers must cross smooth granite, which might turn out to be slippery if there may be somewhat moisture. Jonathan Rohloff described it as “smooth like a countertop.” Metal cables run between masts anchored within the rock.
Jonathan Rohloff said the cable system might be rebuilt right into a variety of suspension bridge, with the wood planks spaced 6 or 12 inches apart to present hikers a surface to step on somewhat than smooth rock. A second set of cables and harnesses could provide one other layer of protection, he said.
“Until you get there, you don't realize how steep it is and how much more dangerous the ropes are than some other places we've hiked,” he said. “It just seems unnecessarily dangerous. … I've done so many hikes in so many places, and here it seems like they could just put more reinforcements in.”
Considered one of the vital dangerous trails within the country, the Angels Landing trail in Utah features steps set into the rocks and higher wiring, he said.
Yosemite National Park officials didn’t reply to a call searching for comment this week.
Given Half Dome's incredibly steep topography and slippery climbing surface, the climb was considered not possible for years, says Michael Ghiglieri, co-author of “Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite,” a book chronicling the history of deaths within the national park.
In 1919, the Sierra Club installed the primary ropes along the 400-foot final climb in order that visitors without climbing experience could reach the summit. The ropes were replaced within the Nineteen Eighties, and in 2012 the ropes and trail were added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Ghiglieri said the climb to the summit might be dangerous and he feared the ropes gave people a false sense of security.
Vickie Mates, a former park ranger in Yosemite National Park, recognizes the risks in a video on the National Park website especially in regards to the hike up Half Dome. The ropes, that are in use from late May to early October, are “not for people with poor fitness or weak nerves,” she said.
“They are vertical, unprotected and surprisingly much harder to get down than up,” she said. “It is extremely dangerous to use the cables during storms, even when there is only light rain.”
Jonathan Rohloff said that despite the challenges of the hike, he never imagined his daughter would lose her life on Half Dome. She was an athlete who played club basketball in highschool, was a sprinter and competed in shot put and discus on the track team. She set the college record within the javelin, he said.
Grace Rohloff had seemingly countless energy and needed to juggle an extended class load at Arizona State University so she could graduate early and turn out to be a math teacher. She worked as a nurse's aide for a lady with Down syndrome throughout the day and as a barista at Dutch Bros. at night, her father said.
In her free time, he said, she was all the time outside.
She recently hiked the Grand Canyon alone in only a couple of hours because she had a time without work in the course of the week, and accomplished the trip by Angel's Landing within the snow, her father said.
The Rohloffs had reached the summit of Half Dome within the early afternoon and were having fun with the breathtaking views of Yosemite Valley once they heard the thunder. When dark clouds began to roll in, they knew that they had to get off the rock quickly, he said. Lightning strikes aren’t unusual during storms on Half Dome.
But the narrow ropes were full of people also trying to depart the location. As they descended the rock, Grace Rohloff's shoes began to slide. She was wearing mountain climbing boots that ought to have provided good grip, however the granite was slippery, her father said.
“Dad, it's really slippery,” Jonathan Rohloff remembers his daughter saying. The young woman was very brave by nature, but he noticed that she was getting nervous.
“I told her, let's take it section by section. Let's do it together. I'm here with you,” he said.
About three-quarters of the best way along the ropes, Grace Rohloff lost her footing and slid down the mountain. He waited with a park ranger for about three hours until search and rescue could reach his daughter.
He shouted to her that he wasn't going and that folks were on their method to help her. She just needed to hold on. He shouted that he loved her.
Some hikers stopped and asked if they might pray with him.
“What happened to Grace doesn't have to happen to anyone else,” he said. “You can put a system on the cables to make them much safer. Grace would want that.”
___
©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit www.latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Originally published:
image credit : www.mercurynews.com