Welsh climber Andrew Foster, 32, was man killed on El Capitan, say authorities, and ‘substantially bigger’ fall has since taken place

A massive new rock fall hit Yosemite national park on Thursday, cracking with a thundering roar off the iconic El Capitan rock formation and sending huge plumes of white dust surging through the valley floor below. It came a day after another slab dropped from El Capitan, killing one British climber and injuring a second.

The climber killed by Wednesday’s rock fall has been named as Andrew Foster, 32, from Wales. National park authorities said on Thursday night that his wife was undergoing treatment at a nearby hospital.

Authorities said the latest rock fall injured one person, who was airlifted to hospital. Ken Yager, president and founder of the Yosemite Climbing Association, said he witnessed the latest fall and it appeared to be “substantially bigger” than the first.

Driving past the base of El Capitan, Yager said he saw the dust cloud and emergency workers rushing to the scene. Images posted on social media showed a huge cloud of thick dust spreading across Yosemite valley.

Climber Ryan Sheridan had just reached the top of El Capitan, a 7,569ft (2,307 meter) formation, when the rock slide let loose below him on Thursday.



“There was so much smoke and debris,” he said by cellphone from the top of El Capitan. “It filled the entire valley with smoke.” An image Sheridan posted to Instagram shows a thick plume of dust and debris ploughing through the valley below, appearing to cross a road and river.

Broke loose again, we just topped out. Ground shaking, rockfall crossed road A post shared by Ryan Sheridan (@ryansheridan) on Sep 28, 2017 at 3:23pm PDT

Sheridan had also climbed up El Capitan a day earlier, when the first rock slide occurred and said this one was huge in comparison. “It was in the same location of the previous rock fall. A larger rock fall let loose, easily three times the size,” Sheridan said.

Yosemite said on its Twitter page that it was closing a road on the north side of the park because of the rock fall. Officials advised visitors to use the southern access road. The New York Times, citing park officials, said there had been at least one injury and search and rescue helicopters were hovering above the mountainside looking for more victims.

The massive granite slab that fell on Wednesday was seen as a rare event but only because the rock fall turned deadly, longtime climbers said on Thursday. Rocks at the world-renowned park’s climbing routes break loose and crash down about 80 times a year. The elite climbers who flock to the park using ropes and their fingertips to defy death as they scale sheer cliff faces know the risk but also know it’s rare to get hit and killed by the rocks.



“It’s a lot like a lightning strike,” said Alex Honnold, who made history on 3 June for being the first to climb El Capitan alone and without ropes. “Sometimes geology just happens.”



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The last time a climber was killed by a rock falling at Yosemite was in 2013, when a Montana climber fell after a rock dislodged and sliced his climbing rope. It was preceded by a 1999 rock fall that crushed a climber from Colorado. Park officials say rock falls overall have killed 16 people since 1857 and injured more than 100.

The slab that fell on Wednesday was about 130ft (40 meters) tall and 65ft wide and fell from the popular “waterfall route” on the east buttress of El Capitan, according to Yosemite park ranger and spokesman Scott Gediman. There were at least 30 climbers on the wall of the formation when the rock fell.

Foster, who was killed on Wednesday, and his wife, who was seriously injured, were hiking at the bottom of El Capitan, far from trails used by most Yosemite visitors, in preparation for an ascent when the chunk of granite about 12 stories tall broke free and plunged, said Gediman.

Connie Tran (@MissConnieTran) #BREAKING: Another rock fall near #ElCapitan in @YosemiteNPS. My photographer and I witnessed the whole ordeal, it was so loud, thunderous. pic.twitter.com/6J3xmieMet

Yager, the president of the Yosemite Climbing Association, said the rock that broke away “cratered and sent stuff mushrooming out in all directions”.

Canadian climber Peter Zabrok described Wednesday’s falling rock as “white granite the size of an apartment building”. Images posted on social media immediately after it fell showed billowing white rock dust soaring high into the air.

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Yosemite geologist Greg Stock said the rock fall was not caused by climbers, who wedge climbing gear into rock cracks so they can loop ropes to support their weight and the cliff-side tents they use for El Capitan climbs that generally take several days.

While the cause of the rock fall will never be known, Stock said the break was probably caused by the expansion and contraction of the monolith’s granite as it heats up during the summer and gets cold and more brittle in the winter.

“The rock fall itself is nothing unusual,” he said. “We have had larger rock falls occur in the valley this year.”





Gediman, the park spokesman, said Wednesday’s rock fall was among seven that happened in the same general area during a four-hour period. Rescuers found no other victims. Officials had no immediate estimate for how much the big rock weighed. But Gediman said all of the rock falls combined on Wednesday weighed 1,300 tons.

Associated Press contributed to this report.