Brad Parker, a 36-year-old veteran rock climber and Sebastopol resident, died from a fall while climbing alone in the Tuolumne Meadows area of Yosemite National Park on Saturday — the same day he had proposed to his girlfriend. 
 
 Parker, a world traveler and climber since he graduated from Santa Rosa’s Montgomery High School in 1996, had completed a climb to the summit of Cathedral Peak with his girlfriend, Jainee Dial, and she had accepted his marriage proposal, said the climber’s father, Bill Parker, a former Santa Rosa resident. 
 
 “This is the happiest day of my life,” Parker told Dial, according to his father. 
 
 The couple separated, as Parker headed off by himself to climb Matthes Crest, a dramatic ridge of upturned rock about three miles from Cathedral Peak. 
 
 Other climbers saw Parker fall about 5:45 p.m., Yosemite Park Ranger Kari Cobb said. He was climbing alone and without ropes on the granite crest, an established route, known as a “traverse” for the lateral direction of the climb, Cobb said. 
 
 While challenging and exposed, Matthes Crest is not known as a technically difficult route. The website Backpacker.com describes the crest as “a dramatic fin of rock” with features that “make for ladder-like, easily protected climbing.” 
 
 Park rangers hiked in, located Parker’s body and remained with it overnight since it was too late to summon a helicopter, Cobb said. On Sunday morning, a helicopter brought his body from the backcountry. 
 
 Parker’s death was the second climbing fatality in Yosemite this year. Cobb said there are typically one or two a year. 
 
 Bill and Gayle Parker, who flew back from their new home in Kauai on Sunday, were at the county coroner’s office in Modesto on Monday to begin making arrangements to have their son’s body cremated. Bill Parker said they were accepting the advice of others familiar with climbing deaths not to view their son’s body. 
 
 “We’re all so stunned,” Parker said. “What happened is so unbelievable.” 
 
 Brad Parker was a capable, careful climber in top physical condition, his father said. But he thinks fatigue from the climb up Cathedral Peak and the run Brad made from there to Matthes Crest may have been a factor in the mishap. 
 
 Parker had once climbed the face of Yosemite’s Half Dome in near-record time, his father said. Their son’s passion for climbing, nonetheless, was “always a concern” for his parents, Bill Parker said. 
 
 Brad Parker, whose photograph appeared on the cover of California Climber magazine in 2012, was also an avid surfer and mountain biker who enjoyed backpacking and fly fishing trips in the Sierra Nevada with his father and brother, Mat. 
 
 A Sebastopol resident for the past five years, Parker was also a yoga instructor and practitioner of deep tissue massage. 
 
 “He was all about fitness and spirituality,” said his uncle, Kit Kersch. “He did more in his 36 years than most people do in 75 or 80 years of life.” 
 
 Lindsay Ptucha, a Santa Rosa resident and a roommate of Parker’s when he attended California Polytechnic University-San Luis Obispo, said her longtime friend was “the best human being he could be.” 
 
 “He always had this big, big smile,” she said. Ptucha said Parker was also a good cook who enjoyed holding potluck dinners with friends. ||||| Girl plunges 550 feet to her death at Yellowstone National Park 
 
 By Reuters 
 
 Tuesday, August 19, 2014 6:50 EDT 
 
 An 8-year-old girl plunged some 550 feet (168 meters) to her death at Yellowstone National Park on Sunday after stepping off a trail overlooking a 1,200-foot (366-m) canyon and losing her footing, a park official said on Monday. 
 
 The child and her family were hiking a popular path along the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone – an ancient 20 mile-long (32-km) geologic formation – toward a fenced platform where visitors can observe the park’s tallest waterfall when the accident happened, Yellowstone spokesman Al Nash said. 
 
 Park crews on Sunday rappelled from a helicopter to retrieve the body of 8-year-old Zahra Allahyari of Poway, California, from where the child had fallen against a rocky outcropping above the floor of the colorful canyon, officials said. 
 
 It was the second such recovery in two days after tourists suffered fatal accidents at Yellowstone. A swift water rescue team on Saturday extracted the body of a seasonal hotel worker who was swept away one week ago while tubing the powerful Yellowstone River, where rafting is banned because of safety concerns, Nash said. 
 
 The body of Darien Latty, 22, of Demorest, Georgia, was found submerged Saturday where it had been pinned by a boulder about a quarter of a mile (400 m) from the confluence of the Lamar and Yellowstone rivers in the northeastern part of the park. 
 
 Just a handful of the roughly 3 million annual visitors die by accident at a park that spans parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, Nash said, adding, “Both of these incidents remind us of the need to be vigilant of your personal situation and that of those around you when visiting a wild place like Yellowstone.” 
 
 (Reporting by Laura Zuckerman in Idaho and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles,; Editing by Dan Whitcomb, Alden Bentley and Eric Walsh)
– Veteran rock climber Brad Parker summited Cathedral Peak in Yosemite National Park with girlfriend Jainee Dial on Saturday, and then proposed. "This is the happiest day of my life," he told her when she accepted, according to his father. Then the couple parted ways, and tragedy struck. Parker, 36, intended to climb Matthes Crest, about three miles away. He was climbing alone, and without ropes, in the Tuolumne Meadows area when other climbers saw him fall around 5:45pm. His body was found by park rangers, and retrieved from the backcountry the next morning. "What happened is so unbelievable," Parker's father tells the Press Democrat. The route he was on is not known to be particularly dangerous, and Parker was a careful and experienced climber, his dad says, theorizing that his son may simply have been too tired after already having climbed Cathedral Peak that day and then running to Matthes Crest. In Yellowstone National Park Sunday, an 8-year-old girl also fell to her death, the Raw Story reports. Zahra Allahyari was hiking along a popular path with her family when she accidentally stepped off a trail and lost her footing, plunging 550 feet. (Western Europe's tallest mountain recently saw its deadliest accident in two years.)