A 20-year-old college student fell to her death from Yosemite National Park’s Half Dome peak July 13 while she was hiking with her father, ABC30 reported.
Grace Rohloff slipped and fell 200 feet to her death while she and her father were making a descent from the peak during a rainstorm, according to ABC30.
“Unfortunately, she lost control in between two of the wood slats and slid on the granite,” her father, Jonathan Rohloff, told ABC30. “It happened all quickly. I tried to reach down for her and reach out for her, and she went off the side, and it just happened in a heartbeat.”
Grace, an Arizona state student and experienced hiker who hiked the Grand Canyon when she was 13, hoped to become a teacher, ABC30 reported. (RELATED: One Climber Dead, Another Seriously Injured After 1,000-Foot Fall Off Alaska’s Mount Johnson)
20-year-old woman dies after falling off Half Dome in Yosemite National Park https://t.co/8Isaq9FySH
— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) July 25, 2024
Grace’s death comes on the heels of another tragedy in June at Yosemite when James Hall died trying to save his girlfriend after she slipped into a waterfall at the park. Both Hall and his girlfriend, Monica Ledesma, perished in the accident.
According to research conducted by the law firm Roberts & Spiegel, there have been nearly 1300 deaths at Yosemite, mostly from slips and falls, drowning and natural death.
The law firm notes that between 2007 and 2023, 53 people slipped or fell to their deaths at Yosemite, including a 29-year-old hiker who fell from the Half Dome in 2019.
Yosemite Park’s website states that the Half Dome is a popular 14 to 16 mile round trip hike ending with a 400 foot cable climb that “had killed relatively few people.” Still, the park warns that “injuries are not uncommon for those acting irresponsibly.”
Grace’s father told ABC30 that he thinks the National Park Service can make the Half Dome hike safer.
“They have a wooden slat that’s about every 10 feet apart from each other. In between the 10 feet, the granite has been walked on so much, it’s worn down, almost like a granite countertop. Once water gets on there, it just becomes very slick. There’s no reason that they couldn’t be a wooden plank every foot,” said Rohloff.
Rohloff knows that his daughter is gone but wants the park to be safer for future hikers, ABC30 reported.
