With family members watching, a woman from Nebraska climbed over a railing, ignored warning signs and illegally climbed Mount Rushmore, reaching as high as 15 feet from the top of the sculpture between Washington and Jefferson.
She climbed the iconic monument last Friday barefoot and without a rope.
On Monday in federal court in Rapid City, S.D., Alexandria Incontro learned the cost of her ill-advised climb. She pleaded guilty to the crime and was fined $1,000 and a $30 fee, as reported by the Rapid City Journal.
Charges of trespassing on property not open to the public, violating a closure of public use limit and failure to obey a lawful order were dropped by prosecutors.
Incontro was visiting Mount Rushmore from Omaha with her two children and more than a dozen other family members.
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A report said she began climbing just after 7 p.m., prompting a federal officer and park ranger to respond. When told to come down, Incontro responded by saying something like “do you want me to come down fast or slow?” according to the Journal. But she did neither at first, continuing to climb even higher.
Eventually Incontro agreed to climb down. She was then arrested and attended to by Keystone Ambulance medics for scapes to her limbs from falling on her way up the rock pile and minor wounds on her feet. She was taken to Pennington County Jail.
Maureen McGee-Ballinger, spokeswoman for the memorial, said she had no information on the incident and didn’t know if this is the highest anyone has climbed.
Incontro is not the first person to scale Mount Rushmore. A 19-year-old was fined $1,000 after climbing onto the rock pile last July. In 2009, 11 Greenpeace activists used ropes to climb up the back of the monument before some rappelled down the face of the sculptures and unfurled a banner calling for politicians to take action against global warming. The group had to pay $30,866 in fines and do community service.
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
