[HN Gopher] Remembering the time it rained 6k pounds of marijuan...
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Remembering the time it rained 6k pounds of marijuana on Yosemite
(2019)
Author : kyleblarson
Score : 67 points
Date : 2021-06-16 21:08 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (activenorcal.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (activenorcal.com)
| mypalmike wrote:
| That site is more cancerous than most, at least on mobile. Popups
| over popups, brings up the keyboard for some reason, blocks back
| navigation... I gave up trying to read it.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Try turning off javascript, maybe using an extension like
| NoScript.
| FractalHQ wrote:
| iOS Reader Mode is a godsend in these situations
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Looks fine in mobile safari using the Wipr content blocker, I
| didn't see any ads.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| What on earth is this trash website? For a supposedly enlightened
| community, HN sure seems to happily upvote low quality clickbait
| headlines that are barely accurate.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's a good story.
| hluska wrote:
| I don't know friend, Yosemite climbers in the 1970s were really
| amazing hackers. They didn't have anywhere near the level of
| equipment available today but innovated in some key areas. As
| an example, Yvon Chouinard (one of the Dirtbags referenced in
| the article) founded Patagonia. One of his biggest innovations
| was recognizing that some of the equipment his first company
| manufactured damaged rock, so they invented some new tech,
| leading to a patent on Hexentrics in 1974.
|
| Here are some references:
|
| - https://patents.google.com/patent/US3948485
|
| - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/19/patagonias-
| phi...
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Chouinard founded both Black Diamond (called Chouinard
| equipment at the time) and Patagonia. He sold the hardware
| business to the employees when he didn't want to deal with
| the liability anymore, and they renamed it Black Diamond. He
| kept Patagonia which was a safer business and grew faster.
| Patagonia popularized polyester fleece and long underwear
| among climbers and skiers.
|
| Tom Frost was a Stanford-trained engineer who worked with
| Chouinard to innovate on ice axes, crampons, pitons, and yes
| the Hexentric.
|
| Royal Robbins was another big name in early Yosemite climbing
| and he started the eponymous outdoor clothing company.
|
| The Lowe brothers were well-known climbers in 60s and 70s and
| invented the internal-frame backpack and the modern padded
| outdoor camera bags, with their companies Lowe Alpine and
| Lowepro.
|
| Ray Jardine was an aerospace engineer who invented the spring
| loaded cam so he could protect the first 5.13 climb in
| Yosemite. He later invented a lot of the ultralight
| backpacking gear and techniques that are popular now (tennis
| shoes, tarps, quilts, etc) which he detailed in a guidebook
| to the Pacific Crest Trail.
|
| Not all these folks were in on the smuggler plane of course
| but yeah there was a ton of invention and innovation that
| came out of early climbing.
| hluska wrote:
| This is an excellent reply - thanks for sharing it!
|
| I think my favourite Yvon Chouinard/Tom Frost story is from
| the dawn of the Hexentrics path of innovation. They came to
| realize that pitons, which was their cash cow, was damaging
| rock. So they innovated against themselves and changed
| climbing!
|
| That's the hacker of my dreams - they're so driven by
| moving their passion forward that they'll innovate against
| themselves. :)
| Judgmentality wrote:
| Well, it fell from the sky into Yosemite. I feel like it's an
| appropriate headline, even if it's not literally true.
| dfsegoat wrote:
| My parents were park rangers at Yosemite when this happened.
|
| They said for the next 5-6 months, the trail clearing crews - who
| first came across the spilled cargo - were continuously in a
| verrrry good mood.
| dver wrote:
| My dad was the AV tech around then. Similar stories.
|
| There was also a t-shirt with tail sticking out of the water,
| with a caption of "I got mine at..."
| ajkjk wrote:
| yeah, there's a picture in the article
| pmoriarty wrote:
| For more stories of pot in rural areas, I can recommend _" Cows
| Are Freaky When They Look at You: An Oral History of the Kaw
| Valley Hemp Pickers"_[1]
|
| [1] - https://www.amazon.com/Cows-Freaky-When-They-
| Look/dp/0922820...
| mtnGoat wrote:
| rumor has it the ganja hauled out and sold back in Berkley
| partially financed the startup costs of a number of now large
| outdoor equipment companies. as well as trips to europe for
| american climbers to climb in the alps and really step up their
| knowledge and skills.
| twalla wrote:
| Some more background here: Yvonne Chouinard, the founder of
| Patagonia, is one of the "Dirtbags" mentioned in the article -
| I can't recommend the documentary (the trailer is also in the
| article) Valley Uprising enough.
| elevaet wrote:
| I met a gringo in Mexico who told me this long tale of a
| smuggling plane that had crashed in Yosemite, and how he and
| other climbers would hike up there to haul weed out, and how
| this funded many adventures and climbers at the time. He also
| mentioned that he was good friends with Chouinard. I wasn't
| completely sure he wasn't making it all up, but the story
| checks out more and more...
| gameswithgo wrote:
| Yeah, sometimes the implausible stories are real. During a
| high school field trip to MIT, our guide saw a helicopter
| leaving campus, and he said it was probably his friend who
| goes to vegas to count cards and makes millions. Sure, I
| thought, sure.
|
| Then later books and movies came out about it, and the
| timing checks out:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Blackjack_Team
| Digit-Al wrote:
| That title makes no sense whatsoever. In what way did it "rain
| marijuana"?
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| It fell from the sky. Also, people were able to pick it up out
| of a lake after it fell. Those are pretty rain-like attributes,
| and not often associated with packaged marijuana.
|
| Yes, it happened to be inside a crashing drug-running airplane
| as it fell, rather than precipitating from a cloud of water
| vapor, but that's a minor detail.
| samtheprogram wrote:
| Metaphorically. Clever as it came down into Yosemite via a
| plane falling out of the sky.
|
| Although, yes, it's a bit of tongue-in-cheek clickbait.
| WalterGR wrote:
| (2019)
| dang wrote:
| Added. Thanks!
| pcardoso wrote:
| Nice read. Reminds me of a similar story about cocaine and the
| Azores.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/10/blow-up-how-...
| perfect_wave wrote:
| I quite enjoyed this podcast about this time:
| https://open.spotify.com/episode/69ec4DsblB3utgO1PEkLOh?si=3...
|
| Also can't recommend the documentary Valley Uprising enough.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| John Long wrote a great story about this, which got optioned and
| eventually became the movie Cliffhanger.
| stickfigure wrote:
| I remember seeing that movie in the 90s, it was terrible. Ripe
| for MST3K terrible.
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(page generated 2021-06-17 23:01 UTC)