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Crag & Route Beta

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Yosemite closures 16-Jun-2012 At 7:14:30 PM wombly

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>Also, I strongly suspect that if they reduced their arbitrarily decided 90% safety factor >to 88% or 85%, then those campsites would be ok.

>If you take into account all the risks of injury while on a climbing trip in yosemite
>(falling, >getting killed in a storm, rockfall on the cliff, bears, car acco, etc), I suspect >that this >campsite closure has probably made your trip 0.001% less risky...........and >all that extra >safety afforded for the mere cost of having the already fuched camping >situation made >20% more fuched!

The study only took into account risk to sleeping areas, not the other bits of the park that people inhabit while they're walking/driving around, which is fairly inconsistent. From there, all it really did was rank which sleeping bits were most risky, and they closed the ones that had the most risk. I figure it's a reasonably sensible if you're trying to the risk to whatever level you're comfortable with while closing down a minimum number of accomodation spots in the valley. Can you think of a better way to achieve those goals?

As for what risks climbers are willing to take? Clearly being crushed by rockfall while sleeping in the dirt at Camp 4 is pissing in the wind when compared to other bits of a trip to the valley. Being shot by a ranger for avoiding camp fees is probably more of an issue. Closing more sites at Camp 4 is also likely to push more folk into sleeping further up in the boulders where the rockfall risk is higher. But in all of those bits the park can point to you effectively being at fault. But by charging people to camp, they're condoning the activity and thus if someone does get squished then there's a non-zero chance of their relatives suing the park for negligence.

So, rail against it all you like but you're unlikely to do anything productive. Your best argument to preserve access to drop by campsites is to argue that they're in short supply and that by closing and re-habbing the 6 sites that they can afford to make another 6 somewhere else that aren't in a rockfall zone.