Rangers recover bodies of 2 people who fell to their deaths at Yosemite National Park
A Yosemite National Park official says park rangers have recovered the bodies of two people who fell to their deaths from a popular overlook. Rangers recovered the bodies of a male and a female on Thursday after working all day to get to them, said Jamie Richards, a park spokesperson.
Richards said she did not know how the rangers reached the bodies but that they worked all day in the "challenging area."
She said officials are investigating when the pair fell and from which part of Taft Point, which is 3,000 feet above the famed Yosemite Valley floor. The victims have not been identified.
The Taft Point overlook has some railings but visitors can walk to the edge of a vertigo-inducing granite ledge that does not have a railing and has become a popular spot for photos posted on social media.
"It's a super-popular place in Yosemite. Really popular for engagements, proposals, weddings," photographer Matt Dippel told CNN. "There were at least three or four different brides and grooms up there doing their post-wedding photos, so it's definitely not an uncommon thing to see up there."
More than 10 people have died at the park this year, six of them from falls and the others from natural causes, park spokesman Scott Gediman said.
Last month, an Israeli teenager fell hundreds of feet to his death while hiking near the top of 600-foot-tall Nevada Fall. The death of 18-year-old Tomer Frankfurter was considered an accident, the Mariposa County coroner's office said.
Taft Point is also where world-famous wingsuit flier Dean Potter and his partner, Graham Hunt, died after leaping from the cliff in 2015. The pair were experienced at flying in wingsuits - the most extreme form of BASE jumping - and crashed after trying to clear a V-shaped notch in a ridgeline.
BASE jumping stands for jumping off buildings, antennas, spans (such as bridges) and Earth and is illegal in the park.
An investigation concluded that the deaths were accidental. Despite video and photos of the jump, officials consider the specific reason why Potter and Hunt died a mystery.