MDavidPhotography

Yosemite Falls, Yosemite National Park

Looking up at the majestic Yosemite Falls. Ok, it's kind of hard to see the majesty, aside from the towering edifice itself. In the dead of winter the fall...
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Looking up at the majestic Yosemite Falls. Ok, it's kind of hard to see the majesty, aside from the towering edifice itself. In the dead of winter the falls are non-existent.

The 2425' Yosemite Falls, which is in fact comprised of three "falls" including the Upper Falls (1,430 feet), a collection of cataracts known as the the middle cascades (675 feet in total), and Lower Falls (320 feet).

The falls are completely reliant upon snow and rain. Upper Falls pours out of a hanging valley created when a smaller glacier gouged the granite to a point where it met a much larger glacier thereby halting its progress. As the glaciers retreated, the valley cut by the smaller one was left "hanging" some two thousand feet above what became the valley floor. This process also robbed the landscape above and beyond the hanging valley of any real soil to trap the water and allowing for a longer life, if you will, of the falls themselves.
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