Jerel Steckling: Rangers keep visitors safe, protect the park

Re “NPS is limiting Yosemite for your own good” (Opinion, June 21): Everyone should see the Search and Rescue program given one night a week at the Yosemite Visitor Center. The presentation highlights how some park visitors overestimate their experience and ability, get into trouble then need to be rescued or sometimes die.

The young ranger referenced in Dick Hagerty’s column made a sound decision to let the backcounty group exit over the rockslide. They would have had to make a 22-mile trip back into the back country to reach the parking lot by another trail. Hagerty’s group only had to travel a mile or two back to the parking lot.

People from all over the world have an equal chance for a Half Dome permit; 225 permits are available each day during the summer. Hagerty’s out-of-state friends could have applied online in March.

Hopefully, Hagerty will write a column in the future extolling the hard work of park rangers who protect us by enforcing park rules and a second column on how much safer and less crowded climbing the Half Dome cables is now under the permit system.

This story was originally published June 22, 2015 at 11:58 AM with the headline "Jerel Steckling: Rangers keep visitors safe, protect the park."