On December 8, 1976, a Howard 500 aircraft carrying roughly three tons of Mexican marijuana slammed into frozen Lower Merced Pass Lake in Yosemite. The wreck wasn't found until January 27, 1977, and when word got out, young climbers in the valley quietly turned a federal crime scene into a salvage operation — hauling out bales of waterlogged weed from beneath the ice while rangers and a U.S. customs agent looked on. Fifty years on, that chaotic winter finally has its own film: High Ground, a 90-minute documentary from British production company Dash Pictures and director Daniel Sharp.
What makes the film notable is who agreed to talk. Climber Ken Yager — who founded the Yosemite Climbing Association and runs the Yosemite Climbing Museum in the park — had only ever discussed the incident under the alias 'Chuck Strader'. He went on record partly because his daughter is now grown and partly because, as he puts it, he's achieved everything he set out to do, including securing the museum space. He spent some of his weed proceeds on a $500 Volkswagen, traded the rest for climbing gear, and went on to climb El Capitan four times that year — including early ascents of Tangerine Trip and Zodiac with stoppers, hexes and pitons rather than cams.
The film doesn't dodge the darker threads. Two pilots died in the crash, and climber Jack Dorn — whose name allegedly appeared in a 'black book' recovered from the wreck — died in a nighttime fall on a hiking trail soon after, a death some speculated was no accident. High Ground raises the question without pretending to solve it. Another motive for making the film now: the witnesses are aging. Climber Dale Bard, who put up Sea of Dreams on El Capitan, died in October 2025, and ranger Rick Smith passed away that July.
Sharp, a Brit who first heard the story from pro climber Leo Houlding after moving to California in 2016, says he worked hard to convince sources that the statute of limitations had long passed and that the film wouldn't turn anyone into a villain. His take — echoed by Yager — is that nobody in the story was a bad guy, just a tangle of circumstances: bored rangers, opportunistic climbers, and a generation of young people in over their heads.
There's even a climbing-history angle: Yager believes the windfall funded trips and gear that fueled a golden stretch of Yosemite first ascents, from hard El Cap routes to early 5.13 free climbing.
For travellers, the story adds a strange footnote to any Yosemite trip. The Yosemite Climbing Museum displays seven pieces of the wreckage — including a sheet of aluminium possibly from the wing, a hydraulic pump and fuel lines — plus, yes, airplane t-shirts. And a warning worth noting: cannabis remains illegal on federal park land, so the Dope Lake era stays firmly in the past. It's a quirky slice of park history for anyone planning a climbing-themed visit to the valley.