"Great Yosemite Fall [with the ten members of the party in the foreground: Phelps, Bolton, Perkins, Prof. LeConte, Soulé, Linderman, Comb, Stone, Hawkins, Pomroy.]," photographed by James J. Reilly, 1870. Larger.
A Sierra jewel, Illilouetee Falls is not as famous as other Yosemite water formations, but according to one knowledgable admirer, it's every bit as lovely.
Tramping through the Sierras with a group of university students, Professor Joseph LeConte joined naturalist John Muir for a memorable hike above Yosemite Valley.
AUGUST 15, 1871.--started with Mr. Muir and my nephew Julian, to visit Illilouette Falls. Hearing that there was no trail, and that the climb is more difficult even than that to the Upper Yosemite, the rest of the party backed out. We rode up the Merced, on the Vernal Fall trail, to the junction of the Illilouette Fork. Here we secured our horses and proceeded on foot up the cañon. The rise, from this to the foot of the falls, is twelve hundred to fifteen hundred feet. . . . But we were gloriously repaid for our labor. There are beauties about this fall which are peculiar, and simply incomparable. It was to me a new experience, and a peculiar joy. The volume of water, when I saw it, was several times greater than either Yosemite or Bridal Veil. The stream plunges into a narrow chasm, bounded on three sides by perpendicular walls nearly one thousand feet high. The height of the fall is six hundred feet. Like Nevada, the fall is not absolutely perpendicular. but strikes about half-way down on the face of the cliff. But instead of striking on projecting ledges and being thus beaten into a great volume of foam, as in the latter, it glides over the somewhat even surface of the rock, and is woven into the most exquisite lacework, with edging fringe and pendent tassels, ever-changing and ever-delighting. It is simply impossible even to conceive, much less to describe, the exquisite delicacy and tantalizing beauty of the ever-changing forms. The effect produced is not tumultuous excitement, or ecstasy, like Nevada, but simple, pure, almost childish delight. Now as I sit on a great bowlder, twenty feet high, right in front of the fall, see! the midday sun shoots its beams through the myriad water-drops which leap from the top of the cascade as it strikes the edge of the cliff. As I gaze upwards, the glittering drops seem to pause a moment high in the air and then descend like a glorious star-shower.
Joseph L. Conte, frontispiece for The Autobiography of Joseph LeConte, 1903. Larger.
The geological mysteries of California terrain have been a favorite topic of naturalists, professional and amateur. But no one was more intrigued than the University of California's first geology professor.
Georgia native Joseph LeConte led a group of students to the Sierra Nevada in 1870. There he met John Muir and like him, thereafter spent years exploring and studying the range. Here he records his impressions of the eastern slope of the Sierra.
In the picture of the view from Mono Lake, I have yet said nothing about the Sierra. The general view of the range from this, the Mono, side is far finer than from the other side. The Sierra rises gradually on the western side for fifty or sixty miles. On the Mono, or eastern, side it is precipitous, the very summit of the range running close to the valley. From this side, therefore, the mountains present a sheer elevation of six or seven thousand feet above the plain. The sunset view of the Sierra, from an eminence near our camp, this evening, was, it seems to me, by the far the finest mountain view I have ever in my life seen. The immense height of the chain above the plain, the abrupness of the declivity, the infinitely diversified forms, and the wonderful sharpness and ruggedness of the peaks, such as I have seen nowhere but in the Sierra, and all this strongly relieved against the brilliant sunset sky, formed a picture of indescribable grandeur.
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