In the Moment:
Michael Frye's Landscape Photography Blog

Another View of Yosemite Falls

Rainbow, mist, and Yosemite Falls, Yosemite NP, CA, USA

Rainbow, mist, and Yosemite Falls, March 14th

I recently wrote about photographing a clearing storm from the Four-Mile Trail, but that was actually my second journey up that trail last month. The first time was a week earlier, on March 14th, as another rainstorm cleared early in the morning. At that time I hadn’t been up the Four-Mile Trail in several years, but I remembered that you could see some great views of Yosemite Falls from the trail, and the unusually high early-spring water levels in falls made it seem worth trying.

I had a vague memory of finding some good views of the falls that weren’t very far up the trail, but apparently my memory was faulty, as all the lower views were partially obscured by trees. I found a decent view about 600 feet above the valley floor, but kept going up and up the switchbacks until I reached some better spots. On the way I also saw misty scenes looking west toward Cathedral Rocks and El Capitan, which I had to photograph, giving me a convenient excuse to stop and rest:

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A Stormy Weekend

Morning sunlight on Yosemite Falls, Yosemite NP, CA, USA

Morning sunlight on Yosemite Falls, Yosemite NP, CA, USA

After a very dry February the weather pattern has changed, with a series of storms dumping large quantities of rain and snow on California this weekend. Yosemite Valley received almost four inches of rain since Friday as a wet “atmospheric river” lined up to hit the northern and central parts of our state.

It was a warm system, with snow levels over 8,000 feet during most of the storm. The dry, sunny weather over the last month had already created exceptionally high flows in Yosemite’s waterfalls for this time of year, but all that rain over the last few days gave them an extra boost. I drove up to Yosemite Valley this morning and found the waterfalls roaring. They looked more like May than March. And there were small, ephemeral waterfalls everywhere.

Before the storm started to clear this morning I photographed Lower Yosemite Fall in soft light, and then as the sun began breaking through I decided to stay and photograph the upper and lower falls. The sun reaches this waterfall earlier in the morning during March than it does in April or May, making the light much more interesting. You don’t get many opportunities to photograph it this time of year with so much water – and with mist around the upper fall. Here’s one of the photos from this morning.

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A Familiar Sound Returns to Yosemite Valley

Upper and lower Yosemite Falls with a rainbow

Upper and lower Yosemite Falls with a rainbow



For 20 years my wife Claudia and I lived in Yosemite Village, right underneath Yosemite Falls. In spring, when full from snowmelt, the roar from the fifth-highest waterfall in the world was the background music to our life in Yosemite Valley.

In late summer and autumn Yosemite Falls diminishes, sometimes dwindling to a wet stain on the cliff below Yosemite Point. This year it dried up even earlier than usual, a casualty of last winter’s meager snowfall.

But last week a series of warm, wet storms soaked northern California. Yosemite Valley received almost seven inches of rain between Wednesday morning and Sunday evening. Yesterday, after the storms finally departed, I drove up to Yosemite Valley, stepped out of my car at Swinging Bridge, and heard that familiar sound: the rumble of Yosemite Falls. It’s back, and so are all the other waterfalls in the Valley. It seemed more like May than December, except that the grasses were brown, and the trees were mostly bare with lingering splashes of fall color.

One of Yosemite’s photographic ironies is that in spring, when the thunder of Yosemite Falls rattles windows in Yosemite Village, the sun only hits the fall during the middle of the day. In winter the sun strikes the upper fall with beautiful, warm, low-angle light shortly after sunrise. You can even see rainbows from the right spot. But of course the flow is usually low during these colder months — except, that is, when heavy, warm rains fall, like they did last week.

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