Part 5 (2/2)

The Yosemite National Park is enlivened and splendidly enriched with mountain-high waterfalls and with wildly coasting and cascading streams. These world-famous falls gain an added attractiveness through the magnificence of the walls over which they plunge. In places the walls, clean-cut and smooth, rise sheer for more than one thousand feet. Here and there the line of a wall is broken with a vast niche or columnar b.u.t.tress.

A number of mountain streams and rivers in the Yosemite deliberately make their way to the brink of a vast gorge that has its brow in the sky, and there, in full self-control, they plunge over.

Jutting rocks, and smooth steep inclines throw streams into wild, uncontrolled excitement. But where a vertical river drops its fluttering current against a magnificent mountain-wall, everything is harmonious and controlled, and the stream appears to have the sublime composure of a Big Tree.

In a stream-channel water goes forward with crowding intermittent rushes. These, in plunging over a brink, break up into numerous closely falling rockets or comet-like ma.s.ses, each tailed with spray.

These in turn separate and divide into other such ma.s.ses, with spray and water-dust.

[Ill.u.s.tration: UPPER AND LOWER YOSEMITE FALLS Total fall 2600 feet]

In a drop of several hundred feet a ma.s.s of water is likely to expand to several times its width at the brink. This expansion varies with the volume of water, the height of the drop, and the direction and speed of resisting wind-currents.

Swaying and bending are further attractions of waterfalls. Bridal Veil Falls often swings and sways gently from side to side. This movement is sometimes accompanied by lacy flutterings at one or more places on the spray-wreathed white fall. Numerous falls in the Yosemite are high and spread widely in descending, and frequently the fall dances splendidly as its white, airy ma.s.s keeps time to the changing movements of the wind.

Many of these high falls are accompanied at times by a fluttering of numerous rainbows. These flaunt, s.h.i.+ft, and dart like great hummingbirds. At the Lower Yosemite, Bridal Veil, and Vernal Falls these rainbows sometimes momentarily form a complete circle of color.

By these, too, the moon produces similar though softer, stranger effects. Perhaps the most pleasing, delicate, and novel effects in lunar rainbows are to be had about the foot of Yosemite Falls.

The slender Ribbon Fall has a vertical drop of twenty-three hundred feet; the Upper Yosemite, about sixteen hundred feet. Nevada Falls is about six hundred feet high. Vernal Falls is one hundred feet wide at the top and drops three hundred feet. The Vernal and Nevada Falls are in the midst of magnificent and novel rock scenery. The Illilouette Fall is about six hundred feet high and is one of the most beautiful in the Park.

The Tueeulala and Wapama Falls in Hetch-Hetchy have their own individual setting and behavior. The Wapama, though lacking the verticality of the Upper Yosemite Falls, carries a greater volume of water. Yosemite Creek is a true mountain stream. In its first ten miles it goes through a number of zones, pa.s.ses a variety of plant life, and makes a descent of six thousand feet. One third of this descent is in the Falls of the Yosemite.

John Muir tells us that one windy day the Upper Falls was struck by an upward wind pressure that bent and drove the water back over the brow of the cliff. The wind held back the water so that the fall was cut entirely in two for a few minutes. But more wonderful than this was one day when the wind struck the Upper Falls at a point about halfway down and there stopped and supported its falling waters. For more than a minute the water piled up in an enormous conical acc.u.mulation about seven hundred feet high. All the while the water poured over steadily from above, and the entire ma.s.s rested upon the elastic but invisible air. Then came a wild collapse.

At the foot of some of these waterfalls vast ice-cones are sometimes formed. Occasionally these spread out over a large area and rise to the height of several hundred feet.

Among the numerous cascades in the Park, one of the most precipitous is the Sentinel, which endlessly comes tumbling down over a steep rough incline of thirty-two hundred feet. In the upper end of the Tuolumne Canon the Tuolumne River rushes over inclined rocks and forms one of the most scenic rapids in the world.

5. SEEING YOSEMITE

I wish that all who visit the Yosemite National Park would have a view from the top of Mount Hoffman. I wish also that they might see Tuolumne Meadows, wander over the near-by alpine moorlands, and stand in the center of Hetch-Hetchy Valley.

Even the most flying visit to the Yosemite Valley should include a visit to Lake Tenaya, Little Yosemite, Nevada, and Vernal Falls, and, last, and in some respects most important, a view across and down into the valley from Glacier Point on the south side, and also from the summit of Eagle Peak on the opposite side.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LAKE TENAYA YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK]

From the first, John Muir called Hetch-Hetchy the Tuolumne Yosemite and considered it a rival of the Yosemite Valley and ”a wonderfully exact counterpart of the Merced Yosemite.” It is less than half the size of the Yosemite, and its walls are about a thousand feet lower.

Two immense rocks stand at the entrance. On the south wall is Koloma, a ma.s.sive rock twenty-three hundred feet high. On the north wall is an almost sheer front of rock that rises eighteen hundred feet. Over this plunges Tueeulala Falls with a drop of ten hundred feet. This fall is somewhat like Bridal Veil, but excels it both in beauty and in height.

Over the same wall, a short distance eastward, tumbles Wapama Falls, carrying a greater volume of water than the Yosemite Falls.

Like the Yosemite Valley, Hetch-Hetchy is a combination of stupendous rock-walls that rise from a quiet gra.s.sy valley which is beautiful with trees and groves and a clear mountain stream.

The Parsons Memorial Lodge at Soda Springs is an excellent stopping-place from which to explore the alpine scenes of the Yosemite National Park. It is owned by the Sierra Club, and was built in honor of Edward T. Parsons, who for years was one of the club's leading members. The Lodge is situated on the edge of the celebrated Tuolumne Meadows, by the Tioga Road, and is within a few miles of many celebrated scenes and view-points. It is about twenty-five miles northeast of the Yosemite Valley.

At Soda Springs, John Muir often had a central camp. He long ago recommended the place for an excursion center. It lies at an alt.i.tude of about nine thousand feet. One cannot too often see the near-by smooth, wide Tuolumne Valley with its surrounding world of mountain-peaks. It is in the very heart of the Yosemite High Sierra.

By it is an extensive and splendid alpine zone. Here are lakes, moory s.p.a.ces, polished pavements and domes, and, in its lower regions, canons, waterfalls, cascades, groves, and wild alpine gardens colored and made charming by dainty brilliant flowers. To the north lies Mount Conness; eastward, Mounts Dana, Lyell, Gibbs, Mammoth, and McClure; southward, the Cathedral Range; and westward ice-polished Mount Hoffman.

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