"O/z, Ranger!" * * * * * 13 



overestimate their endurance or their ability to find their way through 

 the forests. The Yosemite National Park ranger force holds the record 

 for the number of rescues effected along trails, for the reason that 

 travelers in that park are more prone to strike out alone. Not that hiking 

 over the trails is unsafe, for the contrary is true and thousands upon 

 thousands of people hike safely over park trails each summer without 

 guides. There are six hundred miles of trails in Yosemite National 

 Park alone. One would think that would be mileage enough for any 

 hiker for one season, but every year a few visitors insist upon blazing 

 their own trails and consequently become lost. Chief Ranger Forest 

 Townsley of Yosemite has made some remarkable rescues of hikers 

 who have undertaken to find their own trails or make short cuts down 

 the sides of cliffs and have found themselves stranded and helpless. 

 Townsley is a giant in stature and a man of great courage, and dozens 

 of times he has lowered himself down a precipitous cliff hand over 

 hand to tie a lost Dude securely so that the rangers above could drag 

 him to safety. 



One of the most daring rescues in park history was made in the 

 Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Two boys employed by the hotel at 

 the Canyon undertook to reach the base of the lower falls on the north 

 side. This slope is so steep that it is practically impossible to scale it, 

 and the two boys found themselves helpless at the bottom of the Canyon, 

 nearly half a mile deep, with the raging river on one side of them and 

 the precipitous cliff on the other. They were seen by some tourists who 

 reported their plight to the rangers. One lad was able to climb to a 

 point where he could reach a rope and be pulled to safety. The other 

 boy fell thirty feet while scaling the wall, cut a deep gash in his hip and 

 suffered many abrasions of the body. He lay in the heavy cold mist 

 from the falls, exhausted and half frozen, unable to reach the ropes 

 thrown to him. Ranger Ross finally lowered Ranger Kell, his assistant 

 in summer and a Yale varsity football star in the fall, and Remus 

 Allen, a hotel employee, down into the Canyon at a point below the 

 falls. They worked their way up the gorge, sometimes wading through 

 the roaring river. They finally reached the wounded boy, rendered first 

 aid, and dragged him perilously across loose rock and shale to within 

 150 feet of the top of the Canyon, where they could reach a rope low 

 ered by Ross and his assistants. It took four hours for them to make 

 the rescue, once they were lowered into the Canyon, and all of that 

 time they were in danger of slipping into the plunging river below, in 

 which case their lives would virtually have been thrown away. 



In that as in most cases the victims had no business getting lost. But 

 once their lives are in danger, there is nothing for the rangers to do but 

 risk their own to save the others. That is part of every ranger's duty. 



