Legal Wrangling Could End Climbing In Yosemite

KTLA: “The rumble began high on the sheer cliff wall, like faraway thunder before a storm.

A slab of granite as big as a railroad boxcar had let loose 1,300 feet up Glacier Point’s age-worn face. The million-pound rock cartwheeled and shattered, tracing a plume of dust downward toward Peter Terbush.

In his last earthbound moments, Terbush turned to a long-ago climbing lesson taught by his dad. As a little boy first astride a mountain, he learned to always protect a partner at the end of the rope. Never let go.

The broad-shouldered 21-year-old held fast to the nylon lifeline lashed to a friend 60 feet up. Another buddy on the ground scrambled for cover as the boulders hit earth, exploding like bombs.

Fate let his two friends escape with lacerations. They found Terbush’s body crumpled in a ball, his hands still gripping the rope.

Six years after the rock slide, his parents suspect that mankind’s handprint atop Glacier Point — most notably a bathroom water system prone to overflow — lubricated the cliff face, provoking a flurry of rock falls, including the June 1999 tragedy that claimed Terbush.

His parents have poured their grief and suspicions and search for answers into a $10-million wrongful death lawsuit against the National Park Service. “My son understood the risks of climbing,” said Jim Terbush, himself a climber. “But he didn’t know the conditions on Glacier Point had been fundamentally changed.”

The legal battle, set for a first hearing Tuesday, has sent reverberations around Yosemite and the climbing community beyond.

Park officials have a ready argument — and an admonition: No one can know when a rock fall is going to happen. And a ruling against the park, they warn, could all but kill climbing in the Yosemite Valley.”

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