A Wonderful Ascent
The views developed in a walk up the zigzags
of the trail leading to
the foot of the Upper Fall are about as varied and impressive as those
displayed along the favorite Glacier Point Trail. One rises as if on
wings. The groves, meadows, fern-flats and reaches of the river gain
new interest, as if never seen before; all the views changing in a most
striking manner as we go higher from point to point. The foreground
also changes every few rods in the most surprising manner, although the
earthquake talus and the level bench on the face of the wall over which
the trail passes seem monotonous and commonplace as seen from the
bottom
of the Valley. Up we climb with glad exhilaration, through shaggy
fringes of laurel, ceanothus, glossy-leaved manzanita and live-oak,
from
shadow to shadow across bars and patches of sunshine, the leafy
openings
making charming frames for the Valley pictures beheld through gem, and
for the glimpses of the high peaks that appear in the distance. The
higher we go the farther we seem to be from the summit of the vast
granite wall. Here we pass a projecting buttress hose grooved and
rounded surface tells a plain story of the time when the Valley, now
filled with sunshine, was filled with ice, when the grand old Yosemite
Glacier, flowing river-like from its distant fountains, swept through
it, crushing, grinding, wearing its way ever deeper, developing and
fashioning these sublime rocks. Again we cross a white, battered gully,
the pathway of rock avalanches or snow avalanches. Farther on we come
to a gentle stream slipping down the face of the Cliff in lace-like
strips, and dropping from ledge to ledge--too small to be called a
fall--trickling, dripping, oozing, a pathless wanderer from one of
the upland meadow lying a little way back of the Valley rim, seeking
a way century after century to the depths of the Valley without any
appreciable channel. Every morning after a cool night, evaporation
being
checked, it gathers strength and sings like a bird, but as the day
advances and the sun strikes its thin currents outspread on the heated
precipices, most of its waters vanish ere the bottom of the Valley is
reached. Many a fine, hanging-garden aloft on breezy inaccessible
heights
owes to it its freshness and fullness of beauty; ferneries in shady
nooks, filled with Adiantum, Woodwardia, Woodsia, Aspidium, Pellaea,
and Cheilanthes, rosetted and tufted and ranged in lines, daintily
overlapping, thatching the stupendous cliffs with softest beauty, some
of the delicate fronds seeming to float on the warm moist air, without
any connection with rock or stream. Nor is there any lack of colored
plants wherever they can find a place to cling to; lilies and mints,
the showy cardinal mimulus, and glowing cushions of the golden bahia,
enlivened with butterflies and bees and all the other small, happy
humming creatures that belong to them.
After the highest point on the lower
division of the trail is gained it
leads up into the deep recess occupied by the great fall, the noblest
display of falling water to be found in the Valley, or perhaps in the
world. When it first comes in sight it seems almost within reach of
one's hand, so great in the spring is its volume and velocity, yet it
is
still nearly a third of a mile away and appears to recede as we
advance.
The sculpture of the walls about it is on a scale of grandeur,
according
nobly with the fall plain and massive, though elaborately finished,
like
all the other cliffs about the Valley.
In the afternoon an immense shadow is cast
athwart the plateau in front
of the fall, and over the chaparral bushes that clothe the slopes and
benches of the walls to the eastward, creeping upward until the fall is
wholly overcast, the contrast between the shaded and illumined sections
being very striking in these near views.
Under this shadow, during the cool centuries
immediately following the
breaking-up of the Glacial Period, dwelt a small residual glacier, one
of the few that lingered on this sun-beaten side of the Valley after
the
main trunk glacier had vanished. It sent down a long winding current
through the narrow cañon on the west side of the fall, and must
have
formed a striking feature of the ancient scenery of the Valley; the
lofty fall of ice and fall of water side by side, yet separate and
distinct.
The coolness of the afternoon shadow and the
abundant dewy spray make a
fine climate for the plateau ferns and grasses, and for the beautiful
azalea bushes that grow here in profusion and bloom in September, long
after the warmer thickets down on the floor of the Valley have withered
and gone to seed. Even close to the fall, and behind it at the base of
the cliff, a few venturesome plants may be found undisturbed by the
rock-shaking torrent.
The basin at the foot of the fall into which
the current directly
pours,
when it is not swayed by the wind, is about ten feet deep and fifteen
to
twenty feet in diameter. That it is not much deeper is surprising, when
the great height and force of the fall is considered. But the rock
where
the water strikes probably suffers less erosion than it would were the
descent less than half as great, since the current is outspread, and
much of its force is spent ere it reaches the bottom--being received on
the air as upon an elastic cushion, and borne outward and dissipated
over a surface more than fifty yards wide.
This surface, easily examined when the water
is low, is intensely clean
and fresh looking. It is the raw, quick flesh of the mountain wholly
untouched by the weather. In summer droughts when the snowfall of the
preceding winter has been light, the fall is reduced to a mere shower
of
separate drops without any obscuring spray. Then we may safely go back
of it and view the crystal shower from beneath, each drop wavering and
pulsing as it makes its way through the air, and flashing off jets of
colored light of ravishing beauty. But all this is invisible from the
bottom of the Valley, like a thousand other interesting things. One
must
labor for beauty as for bread, here as elsewhere.
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