Adventure-Crew.com

LASSEN VOLCANIC NATIONAL PARK, Calif.—A 13-year-old Red Bluff girl who was caught in a rock slide at Lassen Volcanic National Park has been upgraded from serious to fair condition.
Katrina Botell suffered extensive facial injuries Wednesday when she was hit by falling rocks while hiking a steep trail with her family. Her younger brother, 9-year-old Thomas Botell, was killed.

The children’s parents were not injured, and their 6-year-old sister suffered minor scrapes.

Officials still don’t know what caused the slide on the 2.5-mile Lassen Peak trail. They say the trail isn’t normally susceptible to rock slides.

The trail, which draws as many as 30,000 hikers each year, has been closed while officials investigate the incident.

 

MercuryNews.com

Text by Christian Camerota Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger has a plan to help remedy California's budget debacle: terminate state parks. With the state in dire financial straits--partially as a result of private and commercial property values run amok and a slew of bad mortgages--it seems only fair to focus on shutting down what little public land remains. A report in the San Jose Mercury News in May indicated that Schwarzenegger's initial proposal was to close 80 percent of California's state parks (220 out of 279), with an estimated savings of about $143 million, or far less than 1 percent of the state's $24 billion budget shortfall (mercurynews.com). If you're looking for irony here, there's plenty of it. Just consider the fact, as an LA Times article points out, that keeping an eye on unmanned wilderness is actually pretty pricey. When parks close, they become havens for criminal activity that must be...