Tenaya Falls

Tenaya Falls is a very modest waterfall by Yosemite standards, but as it is also not exactly advertised and there is no official trail leading to it, few people ever visit despite its relatively close proximity to the busiest parts of Yosemite Valley. At the falls Tenaya Creek sheets over a long, gradually slanting protrusion of granite which features several deep groves. These cracks cause the creek to split into as many as five channels, and when the water reaches the edge of the shelf, it plunges in side-by-side falls, ranging from 40 feet on the far right to 88 feet on the far left, with another seasonal channel splitting off further to the west (which doesn't fall so much as cascade). Below the falls Tenaya Creek makes a sharp horseshoe bend around a buttress of rock which both obstructs views of the falls from further downstream and makes it difficult to photograph the falls in entirety.This waterfall was photographed at least as early as 1883 but possibly (likely even) predating 1870 by John James Reilly, who captioned the photographs with the name Tenaya Falls. As this name has not been commonly documented it hasn't been used frequently (though by coincidence it is among the more common colloquial titles the falls have held). Chris Shaffer uses the title Three Chute Falls in his book The Definitive Guide to the Waterfalls of Central and Southern California, and we felt it to be a more interesting title for the falls but upon discovering that the name Tenaya Falls actually held historical precedent, we reverted the entry to its proper title.