Ribbon Fall, located in Yosemite National Park in California, flows off a cliff on the west side of El Capitan, and is the largest single-drop waterfall in North America. The fall is fed by melting winter snow; while therefore dry for much of the year, the fall is a spectacular 1,612 feet (491 m) in the spring. In exceptional years, an ice cone develops at its base during the winter months similar to that which usually forms beneath Upper Yosemite Fall. This deposit can reach a depth of 200 feet, versus 322 feet for the greatest depth of the ice cone beneath the Upper Fall and Lower Fall. It is the tallest, continuous falls waterfall in the United States.
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The top of Ribbon Fall.
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Ribbon Fall as seen from its base. Note the ice cone.
Famous quotes containing the words ribbon and/or fall:
“I’ll tell you how the Sun rose—
A Ribbon at a time—”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
“Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.”
—Anonymous. Late 19th century ballad.
The quatrain refers to the famous case of Lizzie Borden, tried for the murder of her father and stepmother on Aug. 4, 1892, in Fall River, Massachusetts. Though she was found innocent, there were many who contested the verdict, occasioning a prodigious output of articles and books, including, most recently, Frank Spiering’s Lizzie (1985)