Customer Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic, fascinating, well worth reading!
Comment: Other reviews competently summarize the book, so I will not do so myself.
I found the book to be addicting. I am not an avid reader. I just don't have time. (Or make time.) On our yearly trips to Yosemite last year, I saw this at the Information Center, started reading a story here and there and left regretting not buying it. This year I purchased it and could not put it down. I even reread the stories I read last year because it is so fascinating!
Ghilieri and Farabee do such a great job of walking the fine line of writing this book for the purpose of educating and not sensationalizing the material, which would be quite easy to do. As a previous comment noted, there aren't a lot of "gory" explicit details, but enough to get a sense of the enormity of the incidents.
At the beginning of each chapter there usually is a story about an incident with a "happy" ending concerning the theme of the chapter. ("Happy" in that the people involved actually survived, perhaps with severe injuries.) Without self-control, it is almost impossible to put the book down in that when one story is concluded, another pulls you in.
I disagree with the two low-scoring comments posted about clichés and wordy narrative. I didn't experience many clichés nor did I notice many repeated phrases. If there were, I ask how would you expect someone to write about hundreds of deaths--all a result of stupidity--in one book without repeating oneself? I disagree completely with the complaint about the excessive narrative as Farabee's insight as a Search and Rescue personnel adds tremendously from not only his analysis but occasionally even his first-hand account.
As a parent and a teacher, I believe this book should be required reading (especially that of males) to learn the book's valuable lesson, not only as it applies to Yosemite or any natural wonder, but to life in general.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Comment: This was a book I just couldn't put down. It was absolutely awesome. From bad luck to dumb luck to out and out vicious deaths, the stories of deaths in the park were facinating. It's definately a must read and ranks in the top 5 of any book I've ever read.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite
Comment: This book is not nearly as well written as is its sister book Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon. After reading the latter I was looking forward to a similar bit of prose in Yosemite. Yosemite has its moments but there is a bit too much detail on the work of the rangers (authors). Had the book been a 100 or more pages less it might have rivaled the Grand Canyon book. My guess is that Yosemite would have been much better had there been some quality editing.
Customer Rating:
Summary: National Park attracts idiots!
Comment: Off The Wall: Death in Yosemite is a book that chronicles the history of deaths in Yosemite park in California. From hikers to swimmers to base jumpers there is no shortage of people who will do very dangerous and idiotic things in a national park. The tale is told by two park rangers, Michael Ghiglieri and Charles Farabee who, in addition to performing their normal duties, also are involved in search and rescue for climbers and hikers who have met with injury or even death. Most of these hikers and tourists are either unprepared, overzealous, or just downright stupid. Not to mention those who are blatantly suicidal. The rangers are even deputized as such to be coroners for the counties in which they work.
The book is extremely detailed and well written. The stories range from comical to ironic to sad and eventually to gruesome and diabolical. There is no shortage of ways to die in Yosemite: wading in rivers with dangerous flows just above fatal waterfalls seems to be the most idiotic. There are: car accidents, failed parachutes of base jumpers, wall climbers who fall, lost hikers, ice climbers, goring animals, bears, mules, suicides and homicides. The book spells them all out.
There is even the tale of a lost hiker on whom hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars was spent in a hopeless search and rescue only to discover the person had merely hiked a few yards out of sight of his wife, turned around and was found years later alive and well and living in Maine. He had faked his disappearance to leave his wife!
You will enjoy this book. It's easy to put down and pick right up agin from where you left off as the body count mounts.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fasinating
Comment: I had a hard time putting the book down. Even though it is mostly about death, it is an important read so that we can all learn from the mistakes from others. There is also a lot of history about Yosemite that I very much appreciated.
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