Via Wikimedia Creative Commons by Stormovik
Visitors to Yosemite commonly refer to it as the crown jewel of all national parks. Lesser known, it’s also one of the most deadliest.
SF Gate reports that an outdoor website using data gathered through the Freedom of Information Act found 126 deaths at Yosemite between 2010 to 2020. That’s second only to the Grand Canyon.
Park Police identified the latest victim at Yosemite as Alice Yu Xie, 41. Rescuers found her dead at the base of Upper Yosemite Falls on January 16, although they waited a week to announce her death. They gave no reason for the delay, according to the Fresno Bee.
Xie is described as a Chinese national living in the United States. A cause of death has not been released.
Anna Horn who hiked up to Yosemite Falls alone says she passed Xie on the trail and the two exchanged hellos. She said the two shared a mutual bond as solo woman hikers on a strenuous trail. Horn believe she is the last person to see Xie alive and thinks Xie fell to her death.
“I am pretty sure I was the last person to interact with her,” Horn says. “It’s just so tragic,” she told SF Gate.
Horn suspects Xie tried to get away from the crowd and hiked deeper up the trail to get a better view.
“People tend to want to get as close as they can to the edges of waterfalls. I guess to experience that rush, that energy of the water going from a placid little stream to a raging, freefalling torrent,” hydrologist Jim Roche says in a video about the falls, according to SF Gate. “Sometimes it’s hard to know where that limit is.”
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