Audio
Episode 5: Beauty That Kills
Transcript
RANGER RONEY: Podcasting from Yosemite Valley on this sunny May 6th, 2010. It's Yosemite Voices.
(Music, Random Voices, Thunder)
Yosemite Voices is a series of radio podcasts intended to provide insights into the cultural and natural history and management of Yosemite. We also explore the lives and lifestyles of the people who live and work here.
(Music)
RANGER RONEY: Hi. I'm your host, Ranger Bob Roney. Today, we'll get to know Moose Mutlow who works for one of our partner organizations, the Yosemite Institute. He also works with the Yosemite Search and Rescue Team. Right now, I'm sitting on the bank of Tenaya Creek, right close to where it moves into the Merced River. From here I can see Yosemite Falls off in a distance. The upper fall is backlit by the sun and it is absolutely gorgeous. I remember reading a story about John Muir who thought it would be really great to take the upper Yosemite Falls and freeze it and then carry it out into the center of Yosemite Valley where people can walk around and enjoy all of its different features. After a dry spell of several years, it's great to see all this water, with plenty more in the high country in the form of snow. The May 1st snow survey showed about 140 percent of normal snow pack in the high sierra here. This snow is critical to agriculture in the great central valley where much food is grown for our nation. Of course, while the water is here it contributes greatly to Yosemite's beauty. The Park Service can't do everything that's needed to be done here in Yosemite, so we have partner groups that help us out in a number of ways. Moose Mutlow -- yes, that's his name -- is a multi-talented man who works for our environmental education partner, Yosemite Institute. The institute is a non-profit organization that provides week-long environmental education classes to thousands of students every year. I began my interview with Moose by asking him what he did for the institute.
MR. MUTLOW: Right now I'm a compliance and planning specialist with the Yosemite Institute.
RANGER RONEY: What exactly is that?
MR. MUTLOW: I'm actually in charge of the Environmental Impact Statement for the new environmental education campus.
RANGER RONEY: And that involves doing what?
MR. MUTLOW: It's a lot of paperwork, bureaucracy, sitting behind desks. I do a lot of phone calls, meetings, shuffling paper, more meetings, phone calls.
RANGER RONEY: Sounds like a really interesting job.
MR. MUTLOW: Oh, fascinating. Unbelievably fascinating. (Laughter).
RANGER RONEY: Is it fun for you to do this?
MR. MUTLOW: Yeah, it is actually. It's interesting to look at what the park has to deal with in order to guard the resource as far as trying to be ethical and developmental.
RANGER RONEY: When you're not working on the Environmental Impact Statements and things like that, what do you like to do around here?
MR. MUTLOW: I do a little bit of boating. Little bit of climbing. Lot of fishing. Lot of sitting like this on the log just feeling the sun on my back. It's one of the greatest feelings in the world.
RANGER RONEY: Feels great; doesn't it?
MR. MUTLOW: It's easily the best feeling.
RANGER RONEY: I notice you have an accent. Can you tell us where you're from?
MR. MUTLOW: I'm originally from the industrial heartland of England, so Birmingham.
RANGER RONEY: Birmingham.
MR. MUTLOW: Right in the middle. Birmingham. (Using correct pronunciation) Not Birmingham. Birmingham.
RANGER RONEY: Birmingham.
MR. MUTLOW: Yeah. Brill mate, it's great where I come from. They all talk like this.
RANGER RONEY: Is that right?
MR. MUTLOW: It's really, really nice.
RANGER RONEY: Nice. It's great.
MR. MUTLOW: It's great.
RANGER RONEY: It's bloody great. Well, how does a person from Birmingham find themselves in Yosemite?
MR. MUTLOW: I used to be a wilderness guide working all over the states and other countries. And I just got an opportunity to become an education director in one of the campuses of Yosemite National Institutes. And ended up being lucky enough to being based up in the Olympia National Park. And then as I sort of progressed in the organization, I got a chance to come down here and be the education director down here. So it's here in that position for three years.
RANGER RONEY: My recollection of when you were here before, you decided it was time to leave because you didn't want to spend a whole lot of time in any one place. And yet you have come back after a very brief disappearance. So tell me about that.
MR. MUTLOW: After three years of being education director -- it's an intense job. You're kind of on all the time and a lot of responsibility. And I'd made the decision I couldn't do it at the level I wanted to. Genuinely do it at the level I wanted to much beyond that three years. And made the decision to leave Yosemite. And I had only came to Yosemite because of the job. I didn't come because of the place. And then finally enough within three months of leaving I got another offer and jumped at it and came back. And came back in an executive function essentially working on the planning process. So I don’t do any programming. And it's an extraordinary place.
RANGER RONEY: That's what I'd like to hear you talk about a little more. I mean, you said you came here and not because of the place but because of the job. Did you know anything about Yosemite when you first came here?
MR. MUTLOW: Uhm, not really. My first visit, there was a staff retreat down here. And I came in and I drove -- was driven down into the valley from the north side, and you start to get an inkling about what you're coming into. And I'd seen it in books and magazines and hadn't really understood what an impact it would have. I mean, it's an amazing site to come around and just get glimpses and glimpses and then finally get down in the valley and see El Cap and the waterfalls and the river. It's an amazing setting. And I've been to a lot of places. I think there are definitely wilder places that I've been and I've loved, but there's something that -- times that you can't quite put your finger on it about Yosemite. Every time you think you're going to go and find another opportunity something made you stay. I think it's the place. (Laughter).
RANGER RONEY: Come for the job, stay for the place.
MR. MUTLOW: It kind of is. I mean, it's, uh -- it's kind of funny. It's like the silly season right now. All the visitors are coming back. There are people whipping by on bicycles. There are people stopping at really alarming places on the road. Each day I drive in the valley -- I come from the south -- and as you come through the Wawona Tunnel, there's this magnificent view opens up. And it's just been restored to the original historical view from the 1920's I believe. And you kind of have to back off vehicles now because about -- you have to be well behind them because as they come through, they tend to swerve across the road because this view just, boom! it opens up out of nowhere. And it's stunning. It's an amazing vista.
RANGER RONEY: Your plans for the future? When this job ends, you going to move on?
MR. MUTLOW: I think so. I mean, I think Yosemite's always going to be here. I can always come back to Yosemite. And there's a very -- there's an interesting cross culture of people that are here. There's a beautiful and wide range of interests and backgrounds who will share their sort of vision of Yosemite and what Yosemite is. And it's more a state of mind sometimes.
(Music)
A VISITOR: Oh, Grammy --
A VISITOR: Look at that! Isn't that beautiful!
A VISITOR: Grandma's idea of heaven is right here.
A VISITOR: Oh, it's just beautiful. I was wondering how deep it actually is because the water so clear, you can just see to the bottom.
A VISITOR: My name is Asi. I'm from Japan. I have never seen such a great site. That's all.
A VISITOR: It's beautiful.
A VISITOR: The rumbling and the noise and the motion and energy.
A VISITOR: It's awesome!
A VISITOR: So exciting. Fresh. You know, it's just --
A VISITOR: How minuscule you really are. I mean, it's part of nature. It's just -- and then you even feel like an adrenaline flow just observing it. Just being there.
A VISITOR: -- gaga all day.
A VISITOR: Just like there's so much anger when it's comin' over.
A VISITOR: It's like it has a lot of --
A VISITOR: Merced River right now? Gosh, it's icy cold.
A VISITOR: Uh, I put my feet in the water and I tried to keep them in as long as I could but it hurts.
A VISITOR: It's pretty cold but very, very, very refreshing.
A VISITOR: Nice. We need the water.
A VISITOR: I put my hands in the water and it felt wonderful. It was very refreshing.
A VISITOR: We're from Texas, so everywhere we look we're just -- it's so beautiful.
A VISITOR: Fresh.
A VISITOR: Magnificent. Breath-taking. I'm sorry my wife isn't here.
A VISITOR: Gorgeous.
A VISITOR: Wonder. Makes you wonder how, you know, how it came to be.
A VISITOR: I think it was really, really pretty.
A VISITOR: And refreshing and spiritual.
A VISITOR: Makes you wonder about the power behind, you know, behind all this.
A VISITOR: It's very soothing.
A VISITOR: I like the water. It's, like, so clean looking and beautiful. It's refreshing just to look at it. Makes me relax.
A VISITOR: This environment makes me comfortable.
A VISITOR: Well, just a small, small, smaller person in the big, bigger things, and it's been a very good experience.
(foreign language)
A VISITOR: It soothes my nerves.
RANGER RONEY: It smoothes your nerves.
A VISITOR: Yeah.
A VISITOR: The sound.
(Trickling water)
RANGER RONEY: No matter what language people speak, water holds a special place within us all. We need it for our bodies to survive. We love to get in it, float on it or just watch it move in that wonderful way it ripples and roars. Or, stands perfectly still reflecting the landscape. For some, water is beauty. For some, water is sacred. But no matter what language you speak, water can pose great danger.
(Trickling water)
(Music)
MR. MUTLOW: There seems to be something about water in whatever environment you're in that people absolutely underestimate how quickly things can go wrong. We deal with families launching in areas that are closed in the valley a lot. And they'll sit there and be quite incensed that we pulled them off the water. And yet we consistently go to a couple of areas and we're always pulling people off of those areas where they've wrecked in their rafts and getting stuck and hung up on timber. And they're just irate that their raft is broken. They don't look at it as, wow, I could have died here.
RANGER RONEY: Moose Mutlow grew up in England but has lived here in Yosemite for five or six years. He makes his living with the Yosemite Institute, an education partner. But he is also a member of the Yosemite Swift-Water Rescue Team.
MR. MUTLOW: "The way this is going to work is, Moses, you're going to be the IC. There's going to be a scenario on the island and there's going to be scenario in the creek. There's triage that goes on with this. You've got three victims. And you're going to have a clock on them."
We spend a few days each year with Search and Rescue running over different techniques that we use in potentially rescuing people. For the most part what we end up doing with the Swift Water Team is recovery. It's essentially you prepare for the best option which is that somebody is alive but the reality is for the most part we're doing body recovery.
RANGER RONEY: That's a pretty sad way to end a vacation.
MR. MUTLOW: Yeah, I don't think anybody expects to come to the park and have a one-way ticket.
RANGER RONEY: What are the factors involved?
MR. MUTLOW: It's the speed of the water. The steepness of the drainage. Massive boulders with flow, not just around them but underneath them. Large amount of timber in there. And it's incredibly aerated. What you see is the surface. The white water is a mixture of air and water. It has less buoyancy so people float below that. Even with a flotation device.
RANGER RONEY: So, essentially, there's just no way you can float on top of the bubbles?
MR. MUTLOW: Yeah. You're underneath and so you're going to be fighting to find the surface. And when you finally find the surface, you're not necessarily in a safe swim position. You're normally straight up and down like you were standing. You're fighting to get to the surface. And what that does is exposes the whole area below your waist of getting hit or pinned by rocks. And so typically you'll hear about people getting foot or leg entrapments. Or they'll sustain a head shot in which case they'll lose consciousness and then they're in a position where they can't be fighting for air.
RANGER RONEY: We have people drowning in the river where it's essentially flat.
MR. MUTLOW: And a lot of times that you see where people are going in, it's the coldness of the water. That people aren't ready for that snow melt. The coldness of the water gives them a shock and (gasp) they breathe in sharply and at that point actually aspirate water, actually bring water into their lungs. And then they're fighting to get rid of that water. They're coughing, they're sputtering and they're not able to focus. Should be looking after themselves in the water and as a result it's a pretty fast end. And so to think about a child going in who hasn't got the experience that the rescuers have in and around
this park, and actually float differently -- children float head down. They're weight is up in the their head. And so they're fighting to get their heads above the water. That would be a terrifying event.
(Music)
RANGER RONEY: There are incidents that have happy endings. And, in fact, some can be a bit comical when people realize they've done something pretty foolish.
MR. MUTLOW: There are two rescues that I can think of now. There's a classic area up in Mirror Lake where people jump off the shore. You know, they're able to get a little bit of speed up and they're able to sort of take a running jump and they can land on a boulder. Well, they're on the boulder with the water ripping by them and they turn around and they realize that the only thing that got them out there was this two or three steps beforehand to get the momentum up to be able to jump up on it. Well, they're now standing on a rock that's the size of -- the top, it's dinner plate. And they can't get the momentum to jump back. And they just have to sit there until we go and get them. And that's one that sorta comes to mind. There's always a fairly sheepish individual sitting on there who's relieved to see us and understands it probably wasn't the best decision. Or the other one I think about is people launching with inadequate gear when they go rafting and it's super cold and they fall in and they get out on an island and they know they don't want to go back in the water again and they know they don't want to get back in their boat again, if they have their boat with them, because they're scared. And you go out and swim out and get them and the first thing say, you know, you look at them and you say, how you feeling right now? And they're like, I'm a little embarrassed. And cold. And it's better to be embarrassed and cold because they didn't get back in the water, but they should never have gotten themselves in that position in the first place.
RANGER RONEY: Embarrassed and cold is better than --
MR. MUTLOW: Dead and cold. Yeah. Up until last year, I said most people who had accidents, it was either stupidity or bad luck or a combination of the two. And last year we had a drowning that sort of like flipped it a little bit and put it otherwise. Sort of ignorance. People don't just get the power of nature and what's going on around them. That they want to touch or they want to be close to it. And they have no idea that there's not a safety piece that actually keeps them back. And that's what happened to a young man last year. I don't think he had any reference point that what he was doing would ultimately lead to his death.
RANGER RONEY: What was he doing?
MR. MUTLOW: He was putting his hand in the water to feel how cold it was.
RANGER RONEY: That's all?
MR. MUTLOW: Pretty much. He bent down to touch the water and 300 feet, a hundred meters later he was stuck under a rock and gone. This isn't Disney World. This isn't a ride that you just punch a ticket and ride around and you expect to get off at the end because that's the way theme parks work. We're not a theme park. This is, this is a wild place and wild places live by a different set of rules. A much more profound set of rules.
(Music)
RANGER RONEY: More than 200 people have either drowned or gone over waterfalls since 1870. And certainly more people died in prehistoric times.
MR. MUTLOW: We get pulses of drownings. We had one last year. We have had higher numbers, five and seven in other years. The demographic is typically young males out on rocks in places they shouldn't be with bravado and invincibility. And 99.9 percent of the time they don't even think about it and have a great story. But the other point one is absolute heartbreak and a family will never get over it because it was absolutely pointless.
RANGER RONEY: Geez.
MR. MUTLOW: I think about a young man who went off the top of Yosemite Falls who was posing for photographs. And the first photograph gets taken and he's pretending to fall off the edge. And his buddy says, hey, you know, let's do another one, make it more realistic. And he went off the edge as that photograph was being taken. It's an interesting thing because I think if you had -- if you drew a comparison with would people stand right next to a interstate, would they stand so close that they could be hit by the mirrors of the vehicles going by, they would say no. And if you -- would stand right on the edge of a cliff that was a thousand feet? No. But if you put them next to a river moving at 20 miles an hour and the snow melt and infinitely more powerful than they could ever be, people don't have the same buffer in their sort of consciousness of saying, hey, this might be a dangerous thing to be doing. And that's where people pay for it.
(Music)
RANGER RONEY: Those of us here in Yosemite want people to have a great time. And nothing could be worse or sadder than a family losing a loved one. One moment they're experiencing joy and the next they're in the depths of grief. Moose has one last story that tells it all.
(Music)
MR. MUTLOW: There's, there was a drowning near Mirror Lake. And if you look at that water, it's a very narrow stream. It's funneled through a pretty defined area to two big rocks. And a young man was just clambering around on the rock. He was -- him and his buddy had come to the park with his buddy's family and they were going to climb on the rocks and look at the water. And there's actually a video, the family is shooting a video. And you see his buddy get up on the rock and sort of scramble up. And he struggles to do that, so he goes around the corner. And he maybe goes out 12 feet to the left of where his buddy was. And he looks back at the camera and he's smiling. And then he goes to climb up on the rock and he loses his footing and he falls in the water. And the last shot as they're sort of realizing something is going wrong, is him so tantalizing close to the shore. And you see him reach out. And it's a matter of inches. And he's just swept away. And he went maybe less than a hundred feet and got pinned and drowned. And I think about that one a lot because that young man had absolutely no idea that his little bit of very innocent exploration at the water's edge was going to have that horrible consequence. And he -- yeah, I think anybody who was there who would have seen that it would have affected them deeply. It took us more -- just over a day to get his body out. And when you pull out -- when you're trying to do a body recovery, when you're fighting against the force of water, you have to use an equivalent force or greater to move a body out. And no family member should ever see that child being removed from that situation because it's, it's a very -- it's a disturbing image to see a loved one covered in ropes being pulled to the shore. And it's not -- when you've pulled the person out, it's not the person that they loved. It's a vessel full of water. It's just very sad. Very sad.
(Music)
RANGER RONEY: Now I can interview you.
A VISITOR: Yeah.
RANGER RONEY: Yeah. You can tell me all about how much you love these waterfalls.
A VISITOR: It's amazing; isn't it?
RANGER RONEY: So where are you from?
A VISITOR: From London.
RANGER RONEY: London.
A VISITOR: UK.
RANGER RONEY: UK.
A VISITOR: Yeah.
RANGER RONEY: The man who is going to tell us about the bad accidents that he's seen on the rivers here in the valley is from Birmingham.
A VISITOR: Oh, yeah. We used to live in Coventry, all of us. We're a band. And we're on tour here in California.
RANGER RONEY: Oh. Is that right?
A VISITOR: And we went to a music school in Coventry which is about 10 minutes on the train. It's cool.
RANGER RONEY: What's the band name?
A VISITOR: Trip to Dover. My name is Louis Morgan. I play drums.
A VISITOR: My name is Yohanis Stile. I play keys.
A VISITOR: My name is Rob Minechip. I play base.
A VISITOR: My name is Ola Tallis. I sing and I play guitar. So, yeah, I formed the band.
RANGER RONEY: Trip to Dover.
A VISITOR: Yeah.
RANGER RONEY: All right.
A VISITOR: Yeah, yeah.
RANGER RONEY: How long are you in the states?
A VISITOR: For five weeks total.
RANGER RONEY: Five weeks.
A VISITOR: Yeah. We've been here two weeks now. But we've got five days open at the moment. So we allowed -- we got to come and see Yosemite.
RANGER RONEY: It's good place to go.
A VISITOR: Yeah, definitely.
RANGER RONEY: So what do you think so far?
A VISITOR: Yeah, it's amazing.
RANGER RONEY: What kind of feelings do you have when you stand here below this huge waterfall?
A VISITOR: Yeah, I don't really know. It's kind of -- it's quite hard to put into words. It's quite, kind of breath-taking; isn't it, really?
RANGER RONEY: Yeah.
A VISITOR: We were just saying the way the water's falling down, it kind of looks like some animals, or like wolves or dragons or something, trying to, I don't know, get hold of something. Or ghosts or something like that. You know, when you turn the tap on and you see the water falling out, you see just kind of this clear stream where it's like this. There's just so much, I don't know, there's so much more to it, isn't there?
RANGER RONEY: Yeah. So, maybe you should write a song about it.
A VISITOR: Maybe. It's certainly an inspiring place.
RANGER RONEY: Oh, yeah. So how much of the park have you seen? Did you just enter?
A VISITOR: Yeah, we got here about two hours ago, I think. But we keep stopping on the road every five minutes to take pictures and uhm, have a look at things, so.
RANGER RONEY: What do you think?
A VISITOR: About this place?
RANGER RONEY: Yes.
A VISITOR: Yeah, it's really cool. I was just saying earlier like, it's really, you can't really capture it. Like, you can't really take a picture of it. Or, like, you can't even movie it and, like, show it at home because, like, it affects all your senses, if that makes sense. So like, you can see -- you see it. Like, we see the water falling. You also can smell, like the water in the air. And you can hear it falling. And you can like, feel the water on your skin. And you can taste it, if you know what I mean. So it's like, all senses are really kind of busy taking everything in. So you really have to come here, I think, to actually experience what it is. That's really cool.
RANGER RONEY: Puts a spell on you.
A VISITOR: It does, yeah.
A VISITOR: Yeah. I would say like an understanding of an understanding or something. Like, you learn in the school so you know it's just snow melts, then water falls down and then it just comes down in the end. And it all makes sense and you have this scientific model and, you know exactly how it works. But then you see it and it's like, surely the water must run out in an hour or something and it doesn't.
A VISITOR: Yeah, just amazing how when the water hits the rocks it turns into mist because it's hitting at such a high velocity that it seems to turn into mist.
RANGER RONEY: One of the things about this waterfall is -- they have all their own character. And this one tends to be really smoky feel to it.
A VISITOR: Yeah. There's another one over there.
RANGER RONEY: Yeah. That's Ribbon Fall. It is 1,600 feet high.
A VISITOR: Wow. How much is this one?
RANGER RONEY: It's about 600. So imagine a thousand feet higher.
A VISITOR: Oh, wow.
RANGER RONEY: All right. Trip to Dover.
A VISITOR: Yeah.
RANGER RONEY: All right. Have a great stay here.
A VISITOR: We will. Cool.
(Music)
RANGER RONEY: Well, that's it for today's Yosemite Voices. Watch for our next podcast. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. It'll be interesting and informative. And best of all, it'll be about your favorite place and mine, Yosemite National Park. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast, either through the National Park Service website or at the iTunes Store. So until next time, remember, Yosemite is your national park. We'll take care of things here until your return.
So long. I'm Ranger Bob Roney.
(END)
Description
Death by drowning or going over waterfalls awaits careless visitors who get too close to Yosemite's rivers and creeks. This episode features an interview with Yosemite Search and Rescue team member Moose Mutlow.
Date Created
05/06/2010
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