Culled from: Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/800px-Vernal_Fall_Yosemite_NP_CA_US_-_Diliff.jpg\")
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\nVernal Fall: Beautiful, but Deadly<\/em><\/p>\nCrime Scene Du Jour!<\/h3>\n
40-year-old William C. Hansch of Sacramento intended to hike alone up to Nevada Fall in Yosemite National Park. On June 3, 1947, the vanished before ever reaching this goal. Other hikers found Hansch’s knapsack and personal gear set at the top of Vernal Fall about sixty-five feet from the brink. But no owner was in evidence. Had Hansch stopped here during the June heat for water? Had he fumbled his canteen or otherwise slipped into the roaring high water of early June (more than 90 percent of all Yosemite waterfall fatalities occur between May and August) and then shot over the edge to his death? All searches for him failed. Nearly two months passed during which Hansch’s fate remained a mystery. Finally, on July 27, fifty-four days after the solo hiker vanished, Assistant Chief Ranger Duane Jacobs found the missing man’s body splayed among the boulders at the base of Vernal Fall. Nothing emerged from this grisly discovery to hint at what Hansch’s mistake might have been.<\/p>\n
Even so, Hansch had inadvertently set a record. He became the oldest person\u2014at age 40\u2014ever to be accidentally (if <\/em>it was an accident) swept over a waterfall fatally in Yosemite. Indeed, Hansch was also the only one over the age of 35 ever to have done this (on June 4, 1992, one older victim yet, 59-year-old Kenneth D. Fawcett of Manhattan Beach, California, did fall off Wildcat Falls but he slipped off and fell 100 feet without ever having entered the current. The average age of all forty-four known victims of accidental plunges off waterfalls is 23. Revealingly, 82 percent of victims were males. Sixty-eight percent were between the ages of 11 and 29. Hansch was definitely old to have made this otherwise young person’s mistake. What, though , had he done that is so common. Unfortunately, by the time the millennium ended, being swept over Vernal Fall had become, as far as lethal errors go, all too common.<\/p>\n Culled from: Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/a>
\nVernal Fall: Beautiful, but Deadly<\/em><\/p>\nCrime Scene Du Jour!<\/h3>\n