200-foot crack opens up in rock face in Yosemite Valley. Climbing area, trails closed

A section of Yosemite National Park in central California near a historic hotel has been closed as officials examine a 200-foot crack that opened up on the western side of the Royal Arches formation.

The area of Yosemite Valley includes the Serenity Crack and Super Slide rock climbing areas and also a section of the Yosemite Valley Loop Trail and the eastern portion of the parking area at The Ahwahnee Hotel, which was built 100 years ago.

The National Park Service was alerted to a crack last week and found it had “partially detached a large pillar of rock, and that cracking was actively occurring.”

As such, the area was closed to visitor use in order to reduce risk from rockfalls or a potential rockslide.

The closure includes “all routes between and including Peruvian Flake West to the Rhombus Wall” and is in effect until further notice.

The group Yosemite Climber Stewards posted pictures of the crack, which looks like a dark shadow of a line several inches thick jaggedly running up the vertical face of the cliff. The group also cited a park geologist who said there were “rock chips rattling through the upper crack and falling out the lower crack.”

“Sketchy.”

A map of the affected area can be found on the National Park Service website.

Rockfalls aren’t new to Yosemite’s granite cliffs.

In 2016, the Los Angeles Times reported that so called “exfoliations” were falling in Yosemite at a rate of one a week.

In 2017, the park service recorded 85 instances of rockfalls, rockslides and debris flows, according to The Fresno Bee.

In 2022, there were 52 rockfalls documented, according to the National Park Service. The most notable was a 180-ton rock that fell from a canyon east of the Arch Rock Entrance Station and sent dozens of boulders onto El Portal Road. One boulder struck a car, killing its two occupants.

This story was originally published September 7, 2023 at 12:58 PM.