This story was updated with an additional section below entitled “An Update From YOSAR” on February 25 at 8:30am MT. 

Nate Vince, the suddenly famous Yosemite locksmith who lost his job as a result of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)’s recent slew of layoffs, texted me while hanging off the side of El Capitan on Saturday afternoon: “Yeah, Buddy, we’re up here! The teamwork to get this done was unreal.”

I reached out to Vince as a friend of a friend from my own days working for the Yosemite Bear Team and as a white carded EMT during the 2011-2012 seasons. With many other seasons working for the Mountaineering School and High Sierra Camps—as well as dirtbagging and climbing with members of the SAR Site—I felt hit hard by the news of the cuts to  and other park staff. To get to the bottom of how DOGE’s actions were impacting my favorite community, I reached out to Vince and others to find out how they were reacting.

The Upside-Down Flag on Yosemite’s Horsetail Fall

On Saturday, February 22, Vince and a crew of six friends and ex-coworkers—all current or past National Park Service (NPS) employees—hauled a 30×50-foot American flag up El Capitan’s East Ledges and unfurled it down the headwall between the climbing route Zodiac and Horsetail Fall (also known, this time of year, as the ).

The flag was donated by a current NPS employee (and veteran), and the crew took care to respect it. Hauling and rigging the flag wasn’t easy. The wind was whipping up the face and causing the flag to behave like a giant sail. “None of us had ever climbed El Cap with a 50-foot flag before, so it was all new,” Vince told me once he was down. “In the interest of safety, we pulled it back up and spent a couple of hours on top, waiting for the wind to die down before trying again. It wouldn’t have been worth it if anyone got hurt.”

The flag-hauling climbers released the following statement to various news outlets on Saturday afternoon:

“The American flag is a symbol of unity, pride, and honor. The flag represents the ideals, values, history, and people of our nation, and we recognize and understand the importance of treating the flag with respect and dignity. The upside-down flag is used as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property. 

The purpose of this exercise of free speech is to disrupt without violence and draw attention to the fact that public lands in the United States are under attack. The Department of the Interior issued a series of secretarial orders that position drilling and mining interests as the favored uses of America’s public lands and threaten to scrap existing land protections and conservation measures. Firing 1,000s of staff regardless of position or performance across the nation is the first step in destabilizing the protections in place for these great places.”

After a couple hours, Vince and his crew carefully raised the flag, folded it correctly, and packed it into their haul bags for the hike down. They could’ve left it up. It would’ve been tough for anyone else to retrieve it. But they’ve worked for the National Park Service, and visitor experience was on their minds. “We wanted to give people a chance to get their firefall pictures without the flag. It was a beautiful evening for it,” Vince explains.

How the DOGE Layoffs Hit Yosemite

If you haven’t heard the full story, Vince, aka Yosemite’s only locksmith, got fired on Valentine’s Day—exactly three weeks shy of completing his one-year probationary period. He was great at what he did, receiving numerous awards and glowing evaluations. “Then on Valentine’s Day, I got this generic email with my name pasted into it,” Vince says. “It said I didn’t fulfill the knowledge, skills, or abilities for my job. Now Yosemite has no locksmith.”

 

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You might not know it, but Yosemite has over 1,000 structures that use a lock-and-key system, including many historic buildings, archives, and housing. So by stating that they no longer need his position, the government is essentially saying they don’t need locked doors in the park.

While working as a seasonal mechanic during the last government shutdown, Vince witnessed what happened to Park structures when they were understaffed: “Historic structures got broken and damaged—and these are important places. They’re part of what makes America cool. And when they aren’t protected, people go to Joshua Tree and cut Joshua trees down, or they go to the Ahwahnee and steal hotel signs. And what’s worse? What happens if there’s a rescue situation and YOSAR can’t get into the SAR Cache? You can’t break that door down. The rescue ain’t happening, and lives are in peril.”

Of course, the layoffs aren’t only happening in Yosemite. Alex Wild—a former Yosemite wilderness ranger who climbed The Nose with Vince last fall—was dismissed from his job as an interpretive ranger and the only EMT at Devils Postpile National Monument. He got the email on February 15. “My immediate boss advocated for me, telling people, ‘Hey, don’t fire this guy; he’s our only EMT,’” Wild says. “But that’s how sloppy it all is. Maybe they didn’t mean to fire their only EMT, but they did.”

Devils Postpile averaged one or two rescues per week the previous season. “Just about every Saturday,” Wild says of their typical rescue cadence. “People get hurt here, but it’s nothing like Yosemite.”

In Yosemite, YOSAR handles 911 calls for high-angle injuries, water rescues, and just about any other issue that occurs off pavement. Highly trained permanent and seasonal rangers staff YOSAR. But a specialized group known as “SAR Siters” have been part of YOSAR since the sixties, when the Park Service realized that the surging popularity of rock climbing called for expert climbers to assist with high-angle recoveries.

SAR Siters get paid as “AD hires,” which basically means as needed. They get called out for emergencies and are paid by the hour. On February 14, YOSAR sent out an email to all returning SAR Siters announcing a hiring freeze. “We will not be able to hire emergency SAR personnel for the summer season,” the email stated.

In 2024, YOSAR responded to roughly 250 rescues—a typical incident volume that steadily rises year after year. SAR Siters take the lead in nearly every rescue. Not only is confidence on the sharp end of Yosemite’s most difficult routes a prerequisite for being a SAR Siter, but so is being an EMT, Swiftwater certified, highly skilled at rigging, and proficient in short hauling. SAR Siters must also know how to work with Yosemite rescue chopper 551. These are not activities that a recently hired seasonal ranger would just be able to pick up.

If DOGE believes that leaving our national parks unlocked, unprotected, and unsafe is the smartest way to balance our nation’s books, then perhaps the interns crunching the numbers need to go back to school.

Or maybe there’s . As of last year, national parks constituted less than .05% of the federal budget. And for seasonal rangers, only a tiny sliver of that is congressionally allocated. Climbing rangers, for instance, are funded by grants alone.

“People are making huge sacrifices to live this life,” former Yosemite climbing ranger Eric Lynch says. “It’s not like seasonal or AD hires have any ability to cheat the system. Rangers were repeatedly and consistently abused by the system as it was.”

What do the YOSAR cuts mean for climbers?

Without a full SAR team in Yosemite this year, the climbing community is already contemplating the impacts on the upcoming climbing season.

“In Yosemite, I think the biggest thing is to be prepared to help your fellow climbers,” Lynch says. “The likelihood of being out climbing and running into an issue that you then have to step in and assist with is going to increase substantially.”

“Expect to self-rescue,” Wild adds. “There is so much uncertainty about the SAR teams and personnel that climbers need to go into this assuming that an EMS response either won’t be there or will be severely delayed.”

There will still be rangers in Yosemite working for YOSAR. But the search and rescue team and its resources will be more limited. Two rangers can’t carry a tourist with a broken ankle down the Upper Falls trail, for instance. Let alone rig a short-haul mission off of Half Dome.

Will There Really Not Be Any SAR Siters this Season?

“No,” an anonymous source in Yosemite EMS tells me. “This community is too strong. People are committed to the team and providing that role to the Park. But it will be barebones.”

Right now, the Yosemite community is figuring out how to take care of people. It makes sense that the climbing community is figuring out how to keep climbers and tourists safe, even without government support, because that’s what a community does.

“It’s the community that exists in Yosemite that makes people want to work here,” Lynch says. He knows that visitors value the community of Yosemite, too—it’s part of the experience in the Valley. But he cautions that they will be impacted by the cuts to YOSAR and park staff: “It’s a trickle-down effect, and they’re going to feel it.”

As for Wild, he may pivot to guiding for the season. While he’s less concerned about his own professional prospects, he is quite worried about the absence of rangers in the park. “Someone needs to have that job,” he says. “It needs to exist … How do you get rid of so many of us without any real plan?”

I contacted the Trump administration via email to pose Wild’s very question and didn’t receive a response by the time of publication. I also phoned the public information office for Yosemite National Park. As I poked my way through the phone tree, the assistant to the superintendent happened to be one of the options. The phone rang until an automated voice picked up and said, “We’re sorry, this position is currently vacant. This voicemail box will not be monitored. So please do not leave a message.”

An Update from YOSAR

After publishing this article, I heard back from a longtime, respected Yosemite law enforcement ranger, who I had originally reached out to as a source. He works closely with YOSAR and Yosemite EMS—I knew him during my time in Yosemite—and he spoke with me anonymously.

This anonymous source wants the public to know that YOSAR is currently well-equipped with experienced permanent and seasonal law enforcement rangers, paramedics, climbing rangers, EMTs, and wilderness rangers. He strongly believes that Yosemite is still prepared to respond to search and rescue emergencies, even with the recent layoffs and AD hiring freeze. He also wanted to emphasize that the experience of YOSAR’s permanent law enforcement, wilderness, and EMS staff in rigging, high-angle rescues, helicopter rescues, and leadership is unmatched.

The SAR Siters are instrumental in rounding out the YOSAR team, but YOSAR is confident that they will step up to the challenge until they can welcome all SAR Siters back—hopefully, in time for the summer season.

What Can Climbers of Yosemite and Beyond Do Next?

If you’d like to weigh in with your insights or experiences at Yosemite, you can contact representative , who presides over California’s 5th Congressional District where Yosemite is located. You can also reach out to to advocate for public lands in your home state. Yosemite is far from the only park affected.

When visiting public lands this season—and until appropriate staffing levels at our public lands are restored—please tread even more lightly than usual. Pack out what you can and practice preventative search and rescue measures. And whether you’re climbing in Yosemite, Joshua Tree, the Black Canyon, Zion, or any other national park, be prepared to help others out, too.

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The big oak tree that stood over the bedroom of Andrew Goldner’s Altadena, California, home always worried him. So when powerful Santa Ana winds battered his house on the night of Monday, January 5, Goldner, a rock climbing coach and video director, dragged his futon into the living room and slept there with his two dogs, just to be safe.

“I’ve always been scared of that thing,” Goldner told �����ԹϺ���.

The next day, as winds gusted to as high as 80 miles per hour, a danger of a different nature became apparent. That evening, Goldner’s brother, Jacob, stopped by his house and told him that a wildfire had sparked in nearby Eaton Canyon. Within the hour, Goldner received a call from a friend who lives on Altadena’s eastern side. Flames were leaping into nearby homes, and the friend was making a hurried evacuation. Goldner and his brother jumped into their car and fled just as the blaze spread through their own neighborhood.

“It was a horrifying escape,” he said. “We actually turned the first corner, and an entire palm tree came down in front of us and blocked the road. But we made it out, and we drove away.”

Goldner, 37, is one of hundreds of thousands of Southern California residents who narrowly escaped the . Whipped by powerful off-shore winds, and fed by bone-dry brush and vegetation, fires enveloped multiple communities in the greater Los Angeles area beginning on Tuesday, January 7. By Monday, January 13, the flames had destroyed or damaged much of Altadena and Pacific Palisades, and parts of Malibu and Pasadena. Twenty four people as of the publishing date of this story.

Los Angeles is a haven for outdoor athletes, with its hundreds of running trails, climbing gyms, surf breaks, and cycling clubs. Across the city, five blazes—the Palisades, Eaton, Kenneth, Hurst, and Sunset fires—torched favorite trail systems and climbing crags, bike routes, and surf shops. They also devastated the lives of outdoor athletes like Goldner, who teaches climbing at the Stronghold Climbing Gym in Los Angeles’ Lincoln Heights neighborhood. His home is among the estimated 12,000 structures to be destroyed or damaged.

“My house is gone,” he said. “The whole block is. The entire thing is just devastated. There’s not one standing house. All the speculation goes away, and then you’re like, it’s real now. I called my partner, and she just broke down.”

But as the flames spread across neighborhoods and across the city’s canyons and open spaces, communities of outdoor enthusiasts came together to raise funds and offer support to one another. And to try and imagine how life will continue when the time to rebuild comes.

Escaping the Eaton Fire

When hiking guide Amanda Getty, 43, learned that Eaton Canyon had caught fire, she put her daughter and dog into the car and drove towards the canyon to see the blaze. Getty often leads hiking groups up the four-mile route, which leads to a picturesque waterfall. “I feel shameful about it because, in hindsight, it wasn’t the wisest thing to do, but I had to see it,” Getty told �����ԹϺ���. “Eaton Canyon is an integral reason why we live here.”

What Getty saw made the situation feel “very real.” The gusting winds were stronger than any she’d ever felt. She wondered if she should immediately evacuate with her daughter or wait for officials to weigh in. Her husband, Charles, was away on a trip to Colorado, and after she returned home, she called him.

“A huge part of a tree broke off and landed on the roof,” she said. “I should have left then.”

Getty put her daughter to bed and scrolled coverage on social media before eventually falling asleep. Then, at 3:30 A.M. her phone buzzed to life with a text from a neighbor: TIME TO GO. Minutes later, police cars circled the neighborhood blaring their sirens. She woke her daughter and grabbed her dog and sprinted for the car. “The wind was trying to knock us over as we ran,” she said.

Getty and her husband came back to the neighborhood the next day and found many homes burning. Their home was amazingly still intact. The two spent the day clearing brush from the yard and hosing down their roof to prevent the flames from spreading. “I’ve met more people in my front yard than I ever have these past two days,” she said. “I think that’s what you have to do right now: just be the most basic form of human when you see people. Are you OK? Can I help you?”

Madi Pearce, a climber and trail runner who lives in Altadena, was also surprised to find her house still intact after the blaze ripped through her neighborhood. Pearce, 23, had evacuated at 11 P.M. on Tuesday night with a bag of clothes and pet bird, Oliver.

When she came back to her neighborhood on Wednesday morning, Pearce saw that her neighbor’s home was still engulfed in flames. A home two doors down was burning as well. “Everything was on fire,” she said. “Neighbors were grabbing trash cans and filling them with water, spraying hoses, and just doing everything they could because there were no firemen on our street.”

Pearce, 23, heard explosions from the burning structures. She saw fire crews a short distance away trying to extinguish flames at the nearby country club, and other crews several blocks away working on a home fire.

A fire truck sped down her street, and Pearce attempted to flag it down to try and extinguish her neighbor’s home. But the crews sped off. “I don’t know if they had some kind of strategy or they were just stretched too thin,” she said. “Maybe our houses were just too far gone. It was all heartbreaking.”

But somehow, Pearce’s home withstood the blowing embers and flames. Most of the blocks in her neighborhood, she said, are leveled. “Chimneys standing in ash,” she said.

Outdoor Communities Lend a Hand

Even as flames blazed through neighborhoods, communities across Los Angeles rallied to raise funds for rebuilding efforts. The donations platform GoFundMe l for wildfire victims, and by January 13 the group had collected $2.3 million. The and also ramped up donation efforts, as did the —a group that provides funding for both fire victims and rescue crews.

Communities of outdoor athletes also became rallying points for these efforts. When Peace Sports and Total Trash Cycling Clubs learned of the fires, organizers canceled a 60-mile group ride through Altadena and Pasadena that had been planned for the weekend. The groups rescheduled the event for February, and made it a fundraiser for fire victims. Escalemos, a SoCal climbing club, launched a for local climbers impacted by the fires.

Bike Oven, a cycling shop in Highland Park, also canceled its organized rides and instead pivoted to outreach and . Management posted on social media that the shop would become a drop-off location and distribution center for supplies for those impacted by the fires.

Shop employees told �����ԹϺ��� that the location quickly became inundated with donations. When �����ԹϺ��� visited the shop, bottled water, tampons, toilet paper, and socks filled the store and spilled out onto a nearby sidewalk. “We’re just trying to hurry things to people in need,” Will Stevens, a Bike Oven employee, said.

Some outdoor businesses have helped the community simply by opening their doors. At Stronghold Climbing Gym in Echo Park, owners Kate Mullen and Peter Steadman have remained open so that people can use electricity, showers, and bathrooms.

“Right now, our staff needs the time off, but people still need a place to plug their stuff in, and be around their community,” Mullen said. “A guy came in earlier and asked for a towel. He went in, showered, and then left with wet hair.”

Cities Reshaped by Fire

It will take months, maybe even years, to truly understand how the wildfires of 2025 will reshape the communities across Southern California. The Eaton Fire blazed much of downtown Altadena and its surrounding neighborhoods; the Pacific Palisades fire leveled multimillion-dollar homes, some of which had stood for generations.

In Malibu—where fires devastated the community as recently as 2018—fires burned structures on both sides of the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH). Surfer and writer Jamie Brisick believes parts of Malibu may remain changed forever.

“Malibu is such a joyous place, but now, driving north on PCH, to see the devastation of all those beachfront homes will totally change the experience,” he said. “There’s almost this sort of glamour of driving north on PCH—you pass Nobu, and there might be paparazzi out front, and you pass the Soho House, and there’s glamour there, and then there’s Billionaire Beach, with hundred-million dollar homes, and now to see what it is, all firebombed the way it is, will bring you to Malibu in a different mood. It will be a completely different energy now.”

Getty, who calls Eaton Canyon her “second home,” told �����ԹϺ��� that she’s spent much of the week thinking about the trails and canyons where she leads groups. “Grieving the loss of trails is so insignificant to the loss of someone’s home,” she said.

Still, Getty wonders how long it will take them to return. “I know that nature is resilient, so much more resilient than I am,” she said. “And these places are going to come back faster than I am, and much faster than people’s homes.”

Flames destroyed the Eaton Canyon Nature Center, which was built in 1993 after another fire, called the Kinneloa Fire, ravaged the area. On Wednesday, the Nature Center’s superintendent emailed park volunteers “Now is the time to grieve, but this has happened before. We will rebuild.”

Returning to Altadena

On Wednesday, January 8, Andrew Goldner checked his phone and saw a text message from a neighbor. The text included a video of the neighborhood’s destruction, including images of Goldner’s burned house.

But Goldner noticed that his garage was still standing. Inside of the garage was the 1966 Triumph Tiger Cub motorcycle that his grandfather had left him as a memento. “He didn’t really impart a lot of things to other people, but he gave that one to me,” Goldner said.

Goldner texted a few friends about the discovery, and within minutes they’d all replied, including one with bolt cutters and a van. They loaded the van and drove into Altadena to try and save the vintage motorcycle.

They found downed power lines, plus police cars and fire crews. They weaved the van through blockades and plumes of smoke. They passed entire city blocks that were burned to the ground. “Then, the next block would be the flip side, where all of the houses were there except for one,” Goldner said. “Embers were falling and landing on random houses of their choosing.”

Eventually they found . They broke open the garage and rescued the old motorcycle. Other than a new layer of soot and dust, it was exactly as he’d left it.

As Goldner walked back from the garage, the big oak tree that had caused him so much concern was still there, barely touched by the flames. The house, however, was gone.

Seattle native Gavin Feek lives in Los Angeles. He contributes to and Stab Magazine, and has been published in �����ԹϺ���, , and The Stranger. Feek loves to rock climb, surf, trail run, and ride his gravel bike. Prior to becoming a writer he ran the Glacier Point Cross-Country ski hut in Yosemite National Park.

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