Yosemite

Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls. Together they drop 2,425 feet, with a cascade connecting them.

Bridalveil Falls tumbles 620 feet, and is the first waterfall seen as you come from the south.

One of the valley's tunnels

Sleeping coyote seems oblivious to the fascinated people watching from the road.

El Capitan, the world's largest granite monolith.

Ribbon Falls and El Capitan. At 1,612 feet, Ribbon Falls is the highest free-falling waterfall in North America, and one of the highest in the world. It is remote and elusive, however, seen only from the front, and is fed by a small stream. Ribbon Falls disappears soon after the last of the snowbanks have melted.

Bridalveil Falls

Bridalveil Falls

Bridalveil Falls is considered by many to be the most beautiful of Yosemite's waterfalls with its swirling "Pohono effect". The wind gently sways the whispy waters back and forth as it freeleaps down 620 feet. Like Yosemite Falls, Bridalveil is a "hanging valley", created when the glaciers widened the main valley, leaving the tributary rivers to flow over a sheer precipice. Bridalveil has a larger and more absorbent watershed, however, and remains strong through the summer.

Rainbow by Bridalveil Falls

Another view of El Capitan.

El Capitan, Spanish for "the chief", guards the entrance to Yosemite Valley. It is thought to be the largest single block of exposed granite in the world, rising 3,593 ft. above the Merced River.

Cathedral Rocks

Half Dome

Upper Yosemite Falls

Half Dome

Upper Yosemite Falls

Cathedral Rocks

El Capitan

Classic view of El Capitan & Half Dome

Yosemite Valley and Merced River

Elephant Rock

Fern Springs, near the Pohono Bridge, trickles into the Merced River.

Cathedral Rocks

Cathedral Rocks

El Capitan

Cathedral Rocks

Upper Yosemite Falls

Upper Yosemite Falls

Upper Yosemite Falls

Half Dome

Half Dome viewed from Cook's Meadow.

Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls from Cook's Meadow

Yosemite Falls

Yosemite Falls

Lower Yosemite Falls