The Best Sentences In Off The Wall: Death In Yosemite -The Toast

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2d7e810ae7a0d45747998110.L“Knowing how the falls had received their picturesque name, however, did nothing to help the two soggy lovebirds from becoming one with this natural phenomenon.”

“He was a ‘popular’ student at the University of California. With social success often comes confidence, perhaps even over-confidence. Whether any connection exists between this and his next decision remains conjecture.”

“The girls looked around and decided that this photo was too tame.”

“Amazingly, it looked like the two were going to make it back onto the bank at the very last second before shooting over the edge. But no.”

“This is not to belittle the last doomed efforts of these martyrs, nor is it intended to discourage well-planned rescue attempts in the future. Instead, our pointing out that many rescues having resulted in double fatalities with no one being saved is a neon warning sign to those who would attempt such efforts in cold fast-flowing water, especially above a lethal waterfall.”

“He belatedly and suddenly recognized the peril.”

“I finally caught a glimpse of a small splotch of pink. It sat wedged at least four feet deep in a shadowy, eighteen-inch-wide crevice. Our luck had just turned. With the hook on the long pike, I finally was able to snare the body and tug it out by hand.”

“Maybe it was the lost kid’s body. Indeed it was. But the body greeted them weakly with a ‘hello.'”

“Maybe ‘slipped’ is putting it mildly.”

“He saw her, still on her back and apparently lulled herself, drifting along with the current toward the lip of Nevada Fall. He scrambled to his feet and rushed downstream. But too late. She floated serenely over the waterfall.”

“Snow is cold enough to kill.”

“Maybe computer video games have replaced the wilderness as a provider of fulfilling challenges.”

“The difference in elevation seemed to melt away — as did the butt of his new Levis jeans as he slid down the rough granite.”

“The two discussed this tactic and somehow agreed that leaping into this tree made sense.”

“Friendship matters, but speed kills.”

“He must have been engaged in moving his second safety anchor precisely at the moment when his partner detached the first one in error. It was an almost unbelievable case of incredibly bad timing.”

“Is it because the real world is so much more demanding to challenge than a computer game is?”

“Nod off for an instant and die.”

“Revealingly, every one of these fatal mistakes was made by a male — no woman in Yosemite is known to have shortcutted and paid for it with her life.”

“A solo hiker often has a fool for a companion.”

“It was only later that we learned this teenager had lit the damned fire himself.”

“He had walked right off of the sloping rock into nothing but fog and had fallen almost 400 feet.”

“A cry from inside the plane.”

“He obliged by hopping up and down and spreading his arms out over the water with even more exaggeration of a comical mishap about to happen. As he again pretended to fall, he actually did fall into the river and shoot over the falls into that very long drop into eternity.”

“After December 10, he had nothing left to eat except salted water.”

“Night fell. So did the temperature.”

“He bounced repeatedly into the cliff.”

“And what’s left of him is still out there.”

“Instead of dead bodies we ultimately recovered more than a ton of high-grade marijuana.”

“The two live BASE jumpers went to jail. Meanwhile, he went to the morgue.”

“She hit so hard her impact sounded like a sonic boom. It sounded shockingly explosive — so loud ‘it set off alarms of the cars parked at the Meadow.'”

“The only thing we found that was alive was a cinnamon teal duck I spotted that had been forced down onto the ground by the storm. I placed the duck in my front pocket.”

“It now dangled off her face by a thread of skin.”

“When finally confronted by frustrated (a mild term considering their actual condition) Park investigators, he cavalierly announced that the prospect of fatherhood had terrified him and he had wanted out…His plan to vanish off the face of the Earth via Yosemite’s backcountry to escape a spouse or the duties of fatherhood by “dying” and to then begin a new life elsewhere was neither an original thought nor even an original plan of action.”

“In short, we have become what would be referred to in biology as a domesticated species.”

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