Lifestyle
They planned a simple day hike in Yosemite. Then they got lost in the snow
On May 20, 2016, my wife and I visited Yosemite National Park. Before we set out on a trail, I talked to a park ranger. I told her that I was looking for a picture of water reflecting the trees.
The ranger, a third-generation Yosemite employee, stated that Lukens Lake was one of the most beautiful places in the park.
“I think you get the best views in the park,” she said.
Highway 120 had opened the day before, and it was only a one-mile hike from the highway-adjacent trailhead to the lake.
We’d been to Yosemite before. At that time, I was living in Long Beach in a high-rise on Ocean Boulevard. I had an airplane and I flew us into Mariposa-Yosemite Airport. We rented a four-wheel drive van and stayed in Mariposa. The next day, we drove over and hiked to the lake.
Between a Rock is a Los Angeles Times series that shares survival stories from the California wilderness.
We probably got there around 9 a.m. It just seemed like a simple little walk. We had proper attire and day packs. I checked the weather. There was nothing in the forecast that day. It was nice. It was cool. In Yosemite Valley, it was probably in the upper 40s.
As the morning wore on, the clouds covered the sky. It got gray and dark. The light was perfect for photographs. And it started to snow. It was one of those storms the mountains generate. The snow was coming down thick and in big flakes. We got five inches in about 40 minutes. I spent about two hours taking photos around the lake.
“It just seemed like a simple little walk. We had proper attire and day packs. I checked the weather. There was nothing in the forecast that day. “
I got lost in the photography. It was just so beautiful, you didn’t want to leave. But, we got hungry. We only had a snack bar with us, and we had left a couple days’ worth of food in the car.
But our trail had disappeared. About noon was our first attempt to hike out. The hike in was about 10 minutes. We hiked for an hour and found no outlet.
Lukens Lake is a short hike from Highway 120, or Tioga Road.
(Tom Setterlund)
When we headed out from the lake, we kept going straight. We took three different paths, but we were still probably half a mile from the road. We didn’t remember dog legging coming out. You’re headed down the trail one place, and all of a sudden, it makes a 30-degree turn to your left. We didn’t remember the big turn.
I knew there was going to be snow on the ground, and I thought if people go there, there’d be a trail on the ground, but I didn’t think through that next day. We knew the road was due south of where we were, but there was no sun. You couldn’t tell where south was.
The last time we tried, I was exhausted coming back and was falling down. We decided it wasn’t safe to keep trying. It was getting dark.
We cleared out an area under a tree where there was not as much snow and rested.
It was somewhere in the low 20s. We had a couple of the Mylar sheets, which I now know how to use. We wrapped them around ourselves, but they didn’t work because we were covered in snow. We were wet. Instead of reflecting warmth, they were just reflecting the cold. To use them correctly, you need to take your clothes off and put them against your body. We would shiver until our bodies got a little warm and then fall asleep, and then wake up because we were cold, and then shiver again and fall back to sleep.
I carry several fire starting tools, but I thought we were over 10,000 feet, where no fires are allowed. I have read about people in survival situations being prosecuted for making a fire.
I thought somebody would see our car at the trailhead, but we hadn’t gotten a permit for the hike because it was just a day hike. To stay there overnight, you need a permit.
What had happened in that storm, unbeknownst to us, is that Highway 120 had been closed again because of ice — nobody was going to see our car. I’ve since realized no one would care anyway unless you told somebody outside the park, and they start calling and said, “Hey, they haven’t checked back in,” or got a permit.
The next morning was sunny and we hiked out. Once we saw the road, we knew we were safe. The car was full of food, and we sat inside and ate for an hour. I don’t remember what we ate, but it was delicious.
Lukens Lake is a short hike from Highway 120, or Tioga Road.
(Tom Setterlund)
On the road 50 yards away was a car upside down on its hood. The roads were all completely iced over, snowed over and closed. The first person we saw was the snow plow driver, and he told us there were a couple wrecks coming up. People were flying up there, thinking “Whoo, the 120 is open! I can get to the coast!” There was obviously no warning to them that there was ice on the road.
The rental van was four-wheel drive, but I creeped. I was going 5 mph down that road, hoping I didn’t slide off of it. Further on, I ran into a park ranger, and then he realized he was the only one who had a key to unlock the gates. He said, “I’m glad you guys made it out. It’d be a while before someone found you.”
I had made a lot of safety assumptions that weren’t valid. It made me realize that, if I’m going to hike in the backcountry, I have to do it in a safer manner.
I knew we had parked north of the lake. I had looked at the trail map, but I didn’t have a compass on me. I didn’t have any of the things I carry today. I now use an app to track my location that works offline using satellites, and I own a Garmin GPS emergency device.
I had to change my approach to being outdoors. I started reading a lot more, I started carrying a lot more. There’s nobody coming to save you. Maybe they’ll look for a corpse in a week.
When it comes down to it, you are going to have to walk out.
Tom Setterlund is a retired safety engineer who spends his time backcountry motorcycling, mostly on fire roads in the San Bernardino National Forest. He also enjoys traveling with his pop-up camper wherever the road leads. His retelling is edited for length and clarity.
Do you have a California wilderness survival story? We’d love to hear from you. Share your close encounter here.
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
Ben Margot/AP
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Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
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