Recent Happening:



In what the Yosemite National Park service is describing as an "incident", two rock climbers attempting to scale Half Dome's vertical face are thought to have perished after one of them apparently fell directly onto the belay anchor in what is known in the climbing jargon as a "factor two fall". Search and Rescue responders reported a large amount of rock damage on the "regular route" on the northwest face of the iconic rock. Although no bodies have been found, nor human remains of any kind, a reckless climbing party remains the only suspect, in a sequence of events that is believed to have caused a major rock fall at Ribbon falls and may have even caused a minor earthquake over two hundred miles away. One SAR member speculated that the climber was as much as 15 feet above the anchor before falling. "They blew half a pitch clean off the face. Everything just spontaneously combusted, mega-forces, you know".

Numerous park visitors complained of hearing loss from a sonic boom that was heard as far away as Merced. When asked what it sounded like, one park visitor replied, "come again?".

The USGS thought it "quite possible" that a minor earthquake, around 15 minutes after the fall, in the southern Sierras near the Needles, that caused an old fire lookout to collapse, was related to the events in Yosemite Park. Although a senior engineer downplayed the idea that it had anything to do with a large mudslide in China that occurred about three hours later.

A San Francisco TV station reported that rumors had been flying for weeks around the local climber's campground, previously called Sunnyside but once again known as Camp 4, about two unamerican climbers that had been climbing numerous feet above anchors without placing pro. Immediate relatives, if any, have not been identified, but the TV station did replay some close up shots of young mothers in Pakistan crying. They promised to find some bloody remains before the night edition at 10.

When asked to respond, Nancy Pelosi reiterated her belief that all climbing above anchors be prohibited. John Boehner put the blame squarely on Obama. If the administration had just eliminated taxes, shut down the Federal Government, and sold off all the Park lands to private developers, "we wouldn't be having this conversation".

Homeland Security denied that the unknown climbers had entered the country despite being on the terrorist watch list.

When pestered about reports from the Middle East about animals engaging in unnatural acts, the Vatican issued a statement warning against bearing false witness and emphatically stating that suicide hikers in California had no relevance to the Apocalypse.

A spoke person for the alleged rope manufacturer pointed out that in addition to their unorthodox anchor lead off practices, the climbers were suspected of having used an auto-locking belay device. Not to mention, he went on to add, that they were known to have top roped more than once on the rope allegedly involved.

The SAR member thought they should have used an atc and fed out about two feet of slack for each foot of run out. The estimated 15 feet of lead climbing, plus 30 feet of slack at the belay, plus letting another 15 feet of rope slip through the atc during the catch, would have reduced the fall factor to 1.12500 or less. When asked, with rope stretch, a 15 foot run out turning into a 100 foot lead fall?, he replied, "from factor 2 to a soft catch--that's totally sweet".

Hillary Clinton confirmed that the Israeli air force has gone on High Alert.