Details of deadly fall at Yosemite: He tried mimicking photos of those hanging from an edge
On a deadly day at Yosemite National Park, onlooking hikers shouted and yelled for the young man to stop as he began climbing over a cliff edge.
But Tomer Frankfurter, an 18 year-old from Jerusalem who was set to join the Israeli army when he returned home, wanted that money shot: a photo to commemorate his hike along the Mist Trail — specifically, a shot of him with the amazing 594-foot-high Nevada Falls.
And then, Frankfurter fell to his death.
The incident occurred last year on Sept. 4, and was reported around the world.
But details of the accident hadn’t surfaced until recently, after The Denver Post obtained them through a Freedom of Information Act request.
As written in the Denver Post: For a few seconds, everything seemed fine.
The woman taking pictures snapped away.
Then Frankfurter said: “I need help.”
People ran to him. They grabbed his arms and wrists. They strained to pull him back to safety.
But he was getting tired and his arms were slippery with sweat.
He began to slide out of their grasp.
And then he fell.
Frankfurter had turned 18 just two months prior to the incident and graduated early from high school.
He was staying with a family friend in Fresno. They came to Yosemite together before getting separated, The Denver post reported.
Frankfurter then met a group of young people from Israel, Germany and other countries on the park shuttle, and decided to hike the Mist Trail together.
According to The Post, Frankfurter told his new friends he wanted to mimic photos that tourists in Brazil commonly take at Telegraph Rock, near Rio de Janeiro.
There, visitors hang from a rocky outcropping, and it appears in photos as if they are thousands of feet above the ground. In reality, though, they are only three feet above a nearby trail.
The height of Nevada Falls, however, is no optical illusion.
“I thought he was joking,” one witness told investigators. “I turned around because I couldn’t watch, but he was hanging off the rock.
“Then he started to struggle.”
As onlookers screamed for help, three hikers rushed to help Frankfurter. Lying on a rock, they grabbed his arms and wrists, but couldn’t pull him back over the ledge.
As Frankfurter got tired and his arms became sweatier, he slipped out of their grasp and fell nearly 600 feet onto the rocks below.
“The witnesses that attempted to render aid were heroic in their actions,” wrote Jesse McGahey, the Yosemite ranger who filed the report on the investigation into the death.
“But once Frankfurter descended to hang from the edge of the cliff face, there was nothing they could have done to prevent his fall with the equipment available.”
One witness who spoke to The Bee back in September under the conditions of anonymity said he could hear the young man yelling the whole time as he fell.
And then there was silence.
“It was a haunting scream that I wish I had never heard,” the witness said. “Now, I can’t get it out of my head.”
According to the investigation report, Frankfurter died instantly on impact near the river below.
There were a total of eight deaths reported in Yosemite in 2018, including a couple from India who died after falling from Taft Point a little over a month after Frankfurter’s fatal fall.
The wife was a prominent travel blogger and a tripod was set up near where they fell.
The Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care reported that between 2011 and 2017, at least 259 people around the world died while attempting to take selfies.
The Journal added that the actual number might be even larger because many selfie-related deaths are not reported as such, but instead as generic fatal accidents.
This story was originally published April 3, 2019 at 12:41 AM with the headline "Details of deadly fall at Yosemite: He tried mimicking photos of those hanging from an edge."