Every clear, frosty morning loud sounds are heard booming and
reverberating from side to side of the Valley at intervals of a few
minutes, beginning soon after sunrise and continuing an hour or two like
a thunder-storm. In my first winter in the Valley I could not make out
the source of this noise. I thought of falling boulders, rock-blasting,
etc. Not till I saw what looked like hoarfrost dropping from the side of
the Fall was the problem explained. The strange thunder is made by the
fall of sections of ice formed of spray that is frozen on the face of
the cliff along the sides of the Upper Yosemite Fan--a sort of crystal
plaster, a foot or two thick, racked off by the sunbeams, awakening all
the Valley like cock-crowing, announcing the finest weather, shouting
aloud Nature's infinite industry and love of hard work in creating
beauty.
Exploring An Ice Cone
This frozen spray gives rise to one of the most interesting winter
features of the Valley--a cone of ice at the foot of the fall, four or
five hundred feet high. From the Fern Ledge standpoint its crater-like
throat is seen, down which the fall plunges with deep, gasping
explosions of compressed air, and, after being well churned in the wormy
interior, the water bursts forth through arched openings at its base,
apparently scourged and weary and glad to escape, while belching spray,
spouted up out of the throat past the descending current, is wafted
away in irised drifts to the adjacent rocks and groves.
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