Nevada Fall

Nevada Fall is accessed from the Happy Isles area of Yosemite Valley in Yosemite National Park. From any entrance to Yosemite National Park, proceed to Curry Village at the very end of Yosemite Valley and park. Take the Shuttle Bus to the Happy Isles Nature Center (two stops from Curry Village) and begin hiking on the John Muir Trail, signed for Vernal and Nevada Fall, as well as the summit of Half Dome. Just over three-quarters of a mile the trail crosses the river below Take the Shuttle Bus to the Happy Isles Nature Center (two stops from Curry Village) and begin hiking on the John Muir Trail, signed for Vernal and Nevada Fall, as well as the summit of Half Dome. Just over three-quarters of a mile the trail crosses the river below the falls, with a fraction of the falls visible from the bridge. Here the trail splits, the Mist Trail climbing alongside the river while the John Muir Trail takes a longer, gentler and drier route up the mountainside Vernal Fall, with a fraction of the falls visible from the bridge. Here the trail splits, the Mist Trail climbing alongside the river and Vernal Fall while the John Muir Trail takes a longer, gentler and drier route up the mountainside. Staying on the John Muir Trail, one will achieve side views of Nevada Fall at 2.6 miles, and will cross the Merced at the top of the falls at about 3.5 miles. Taking the Mist Trail from the junction, then heading left over the Merced above the Silver Apron will achieve the base of Nevada Fall after about 1.8 miles. The trail continues climbing up the gully to the left of the falls and reaches the top in another mile.Nevada Fall is the largest and most impressive waterfall along the Merced River, one of Yosemite's signature cataracts and one of California's best waterfalls. The Merced River, fed by countless lakes and a basin of 118 square miles, funnels through a notch in solid granite rock and leaps free over a broad cliff for half of its fall, impacting on an apron-like protrusion of rock which angles downstream and veiling for the final half of the fall. Measurements taken by USGS surveyor Francois Matthes in or around 1913 placed the height of the falls at 594 feet, and that figure has been assumed to be accurate since. The current USGS topographic maps however suggest the height of the falls to be closer to 480 feet, so the question of whether Matthes' figures could be accurate after 100 years led us to think that the USGS maps might portay more accurately the true height of the falls. Well after surveying the falls in May of 2013, we came away with a measurement of 577 feet, which is just barely within our acceptable margin of error in comparison to the original figure. So it seems that even after 100 years there are still mapping errors in need of correction - though in this case it's simply a matter of the contour data which the USGS uses not having been updated accurately enough.
Though the Merced River is the largest and most volumnous stream in Yosemite Valley, because practically the entire Merced River basin upstream from Nevada Fall consists of solid bedrock terrain, there is very little groundwater retention and as a result when the seasonal snowpack has melted off completely, the volume of the Merced will quickly shrink. By September and October it is not uncommon to see Nevada Fall as just a trickle of water down a black stain on the cliff (though the falls are rarely known to run completely dry).Lafayette Bunnell cites the Native American name for the falls as Yo-wy-we, meaning "wormy" water. He later proposed the name Nevada (Spanish for Snow) because he felt the thunderous river resembled an avalanche of snow cascading down a mountainside. Like so many of the other waterfalls in Yosemite, the suffix Fall is again properly used in the singluar form.