Mementos, Notes, and Fragments

Gravity always gets its way, it’s just a question of when. For the iconic rock formation on New Hampshire’s Cannon Mountain known as the Old Man of the Mountain, that moment came in 2003, when the grizzled codger of granite gave up the ghost and collapsed. For Mexican Hat rock, the giant sandstone sombrero perched tenuously on an eroding tower in Southern Utah, the time is yet to come, and when you view it—or any other looming hunk of geology—you have to wonder, when’s that dang thing gonna fall?

It’s mere speculation in most situations, but on El Capitan in California’s Yosemite National Park, falling rocks have real and serious human consequences. In 2017, a climber was killed by rockfall on El Cap, and the park says that ten percent of fatal and near-fatal climber injuries are from falling