Dope Lake: A Four-Part Series on One of Climate's Most Unbelievable True Stories

We're sharing the first episode of our Dope Lake series that we're running on our show Climbing Gold. In 1976, a plane carrying four million dollars in marijuana crashed into a small alpine lake in the Yosemite high country. Broke and living off discarded scraps of tourist meals in the valley below, America’s best climbers smelled opportunity. The events at Dope Lake became climbing’s most potent myth and inspired a Hollywood blockbuster, but the real story and the lives it changed is stranger than fiction