Feather Plume Falls

Feather Plume Falls a tall but highly ephemeral waterfall found near Glacier National Park's Grinnell Glacier. The falls drop 1,080 feet in a single leap, making it one of the tallest single drops in the United States. The creek rolls over several cascades at the top of the cliff, then plunges about 300 feet in a free-fall before contacting the cliff face again, at which point the stream is bifurcated into two channels which flow in parallel for the remainder of the descent to the valley floor. The stream producing Feather Plume Falls drains from a tiny basin covering only one-tenth of a square mile in size (62 acres / 25 hectares), and though a substantial amount of snow will fall in the basin over the winter months, once it melts off in the early summer months the falls will run dry for the remainder of the season. The window to view the falls flowing with any sort of vigor likely lasts all of perhaps two to three months at most, and will almost certainly be totally dry come August (if not earlier, depending on the winter snow depth and current climate conditions).