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Picture courtesy of
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THE Bridal Veil and the
Tipper Yosemite Falls, on account of their height and exposure, are greatly
influenced by winds. The common summer winds that come up the river caņon
from the plains are seldom very strong; but the north winds do some very
wild work, worrying the falls and the forests, and hanging snow- banners on
the comet-peaks. One wild winter morning I was awakened by a storm-wind that
was playing with the falls as if they were mere wisps of mist and making the
great pines bow and sing with glorious enthusiasm. The Valley had been
visited a short time before by a series of fine snowstorms, and the floor
and the cliffs and all the region round about were lavishly adorned with its
best winter jewelry, the air was full of fine snow-dust, and pine branches,
tassels and empty cones were flying in an almost continuous flock.
Soon after sunrise, when I
was seeking a place safe from flying branches, I saw the Lower Yosemite Fall
thrashed and pulverized from top to bottom into one glorious mass of rainbow
dust; while a thousand feet above it the main Upper Fall was suspended on
the face of the cliff in the form of an inverted bow, all silvery white and
fringed with short, wavering strips. Then, suddenly assailed by a tremendous
blast, the whole mass of the fall was blown into threads and ribbons, and
driven back over the brow of the cliff whence it came, as if denied
admission to the Valley. This kind of storm- work was continued about ten or
fifteen minutes; then another change in the play of the huge exulting swirls
and billows and upheaving domes of the gale allowed the baffled fall to
gather and arrange its tattered waters, and sink down again in its place. As
the day advanced, the gale gave no sign of dying, excepting brief lulls, the
Valley was filled with its weariless roar, and the cloudless sky grew
garish-white from myriads of minute, sparkling snowspicules. In the
afternoon, while I watched the Upper Fall from the shelter of a big pine
tree, it was suddenly arrested in its descent at a point about halfway down,
and was neither blown upward nor driven aside, but simply held stationary in
mid-air, as if gravitation below that point in the path of its descent had
ceased to act. The ponderous flood, weighing hundreds of tons, was
sustained, hovering, hesitating, like a bunch of thistledown, while I
counted one hundred and ninety. All this time the ordinary amount of water
was coming over the cliff and accumulating in the air, swedging and widening
and forming an irregular cone about seven hundred feet high, tapering to the
top of the wall, the whole standing still, resting on the invisible arm of
the north wind. At length, as if commanded to go on again, scores of arrowy
comets shot forth from the bottom of the suspended mass as if escaping from
separate outlets.
The brow of El Capitan was
decked with long snow-streamers like hair, Clouds' Rest was fairly enveloped
in drifting gossamer films, and the Half Dome loomed up in the garish light
like a majestic, living creature clad in the same gauzy, wind-woven drapery,
while upward currents meeting at times overhead made it smoke like a
volcano.
AN EXTRAORDINARY STORM AND
FLOOD
Glorious as are these rocks
and waters arrayed in storm robes, or chanting rejoicing in everyday dress,
they are still more glorious when rare weather conditions meet to make them
sing with floods. Only once during all the years I have lived in the Valley
have I seen it in full flood bloom. In 1871 the early winter weather was
delightful; the days all sunshine, the nights all starry and calm, calling
forth fine crops of frost crystals on the pines and withered ferns and
grasses for the morning sunbeams to sift through. In the afternoon of
December 16, when I was sauntering on the meadows, I noticed a massive
crimson cloud growing in solitary grandeur above the Cathedral Rocks, its
form scarcely less striking than its color. It had a picturesque, bulging
base like an old sequoia, a smooth, tapering stem, and a bossy, down-curling
crown like a mushroom; all its parts were colored alike, making one mass of
translucent crimson. Wondering what the meaning of that strange, lonely red
cloud might be, I was up betimes next morning looking at the weather, but
all seemed tranquil as yet. Toward noon gray clouds with a close, curly
grain like bird's-eye maple began to grow, and late at night rain fell,
which soon changed to snow. Next morning the snow on the meadows was about
ten inches deep, and it was still falling in a fine, cordial storm. During
the night of the 18th, heavy rain fell on the snow, but as the temperature
was 340, the snow-line was only a few hundred feet above the bottom of the
Valley, and one had only to climb a little higher than the tops of the pines
to get out of the rainstorm into the snowstorm. The streams, instead of
being increased in volume by the storm, were diminished, since the snow
sponged up part of their waters and choked the smaller tributaries. But
about midnight the temperature suddenly rose to 42°, carrying the snow-line
far beyond the Valley walls, and next morning Yosemite was rejoicing in a
glorious flood. The comparatively warm rain falling on the snow was at first
absorbed and held back, and so also was that portion of the snow that the
rain melted, and all that was melted by the warm wind, until the whole mass
of snow was saturated and became sludgy, and at length slipped and rushed
simultaneously from a thousand slopes in wildest extravagance, heaping and
swelling flood over flood, and plunging into the Valley in stupendous
avalanches.
Awakened by the roar, I
looked out and at once recognized the extraordinary character of the storm.
The rain was still pouring in torrent abundance and the wind at gale speed
was doing all it could with the flood-making rain.
The section of the north wall
visible from my cabin was fairly streaked with new falls - wild roaring
singers that seemed strangely out of place. Eager to get into the midst of
the show, I snatched a piece of bread for breakfast and ran out. The
mountain waters, suddenly liberated, seemed to be holding a grand jubilee.
The two Sentinel Cascades rivaled the great falls at ordinary stages, and
across the Valley by the Three Brothers I caught glimpses of more falls than
I could readily count; while the whole Valley throbbed and trembled, and was
filled with an awful, massive, solemn, sea-like roar. After gazing a while
enchanted with the network of new falls that were adorning and transfiguring
every rock in sight, I tried to reach the upper meadows, where the Valley is
widest, that I might be able to see the walls oh both sides, and thus gain
general views. But the river was over its banks and the meadows were
flooded, forming an almost continuous lake dotted with blue sludgy islands,
while innumerable streams roared like lions across my path and were sweeping
forward rocks and logs with tremendous energy over ground where tiny gilias
had been growing but a short time before. Climbing into the talus slopes,
where these savage torrents were broken among earthquake boulders, I managed
to cross them, and force my way up the Valley to Hutchings's Bridge, where I
crossed the river and waded to the middle of the upper meadow. Here most of
the new falls were in sight, probably the most glorious assemblage of
waterfalls ever displayed from any one standpoint. On that portion of the
south wall between Hutchings's and the Sentinel there were ten falls
plunging and booming from a height of nearly three thousand feet, the
smallest of which might have been heard miles away. In the neighborhood of
Glacier Point there were six; between the Three Brothers and Yosemite Fall,
nine; between Yosemite and Royal Arch Falls, ten; from Washington Column to
Mount Watkins, ten; on the slopes of Half Dome and Clouds' Rest, facing
Mirror Lake and Tenaya Caņon, eight; on the shoulder of Half Dome, facing
the Valley, three; fifty-six new falls occupying the upper end of the
Valley, besides a countless host of silvery threads gleaming everywhere. In
all the Valley there must have been upwards of a hundred. As if celebrating
some great event, falls and cascades in Yosemite costume were coming down
everywhere from fountain basins, far and near; and, though newcomers, they
behaved and sang as if they had lived here always.
All summer visitors will
remember the comet forms of the Yosemite Fall and the laces of the Bridal
Veil and Nevada. In the falls of this winter jubilee the lace forms
predominated, but there was no lack of thunder-toned comets. The lower
portion of one of the Sentinel Cascades was composed of two main white
torrents with the space between them filled in with chained and beaded gauze
of intricate pattern, through the singing threads of which the purplish-gray
rock could be dimly seen. The series above Glacier Point was still more
complicated in structure, displaying every form that one could imagine water
might be dashed and combed and woven into. Those on the north wall between
Washington Column and the Royal Arch Fall were so nearly related they formed
an almost continuous sheet, and these again were but slightly separated from
those about Indian Caņon. The group about the Three Brothers and El Capitan,
owing to the topography and cleavage of the cliffs back of them, was more
broken and irregular. The Tissiack Cascades were comparatively small, yet
sufficient to give that noblest of mountain rocks a glorious voice. In the
midst of all this extravagant rejoicing the great Yosemite Fall was scarce
heard until about three o'clock in the afternoon. Then I was startled by a
sudden thundering crash as if a rock avalanche had come to the help of the
roaring waters. This was the flood wave of Yosemite Creek, which had just
arrived, delayed by the distance it had to travel, and by the choking snows
of its widespread fountains. Now, with volume tenfold increased beyond its
springtime fullness, it took its place as leader of the glorious choir.
And the winds, too, were
singing in wild accord, playing on every tree and rock, surging against the
huge brows and domes and outstanding battlements, deflected hither and
thither and broken into a thousand cascading, roaring currents in the
canons, and low bass, drumming swirls in the hollows. And these again,
reacting on the clouds, eroded immense cavernous spaces in their gray depths
and swept forward the resulting detritus in ragged trains like the moraines
of glaciers. These cloud movements in turn published the work of the winds,
giving them a visible body, and enabling us to trace them. As if endowed
with independent motion, a detached cloud would rise hastily to the very top
of the wall as if on some important errand, examining the faces of the
cliffs, and then perhaps as suddenly descend to sweep imposingly along the
meadows, trailing its draggled fringes through the pines, fondling the
waving spires with infinite gentleness, or, gliding behind a grove or a
single tree, bringing it into striking relief, as it bowed and waved in
solemn rhythm. Sometimes, as the busy clouds drooped and condensed or
dissolved to misty gauze, half of the Valley would be suddenly veiled,
leaving here and there some lofty headland cut off from all visible
connection. with the walls, looming alone, dim, spectral, as. if belonging
to the sky - visitors, like the new falls, come to take part in the glorious
festival. Thus for two days and nights in measureless extravagance the storm
went on, and mostly without spectators, at least of a terrestrial kind. I
saw nobody out -bird, bear, squirrel, or man. Tourists had vanished months
before, and the hotel people and laborers were out of sight, careful about
getting cold, and satisfied with views from windows. The bears, I suppose,
were in their caņon-boulder dens, the squirrels in their knot-hole nests,
the grouse in close fir groves, and the small singers in the Indian Caņon
chaparral, trying to keep warm and dry. Strange to say, I did not see even
the water-ouzels, though they must have greatly enjoyed the storm.
This was the most sublime
waterfall flood I ever saw - clouds, winds, rocks, waters, throbbing
together as one. And then to contemplate what was going on simultaneously
with all this in other mountain temples; the Big Tuolumne Caņon - how the
white waters and the winds were singing there! And in Hetch Hetchy Valley
and the great King's River yosemite, and in all the other Sierra canons and
valleys from Shasta to the southernmost fountains of the Kern, thousands of
rejoicing flood waterfalls chanting together in jubilee dress. |
