My Personal History with Yosemite’s Famed “Firefall”

My, my, it has been a while, hasn’t it?

Last year, to be brief, was emotionally hard for me. I had hardly any energy to hike, let alone photograph, and don’t even think about processing the photographs. I was lucky to put out as many photos as I did after my trip to Death Valley in February last year. And the website just languished, forgotten, neglected, a pet project I couldn’t care for because I needed what little energy I had to care for myself.

Maybe it’s just me being optimistic, but I think there’s been a shift this year. I’ve been reviewing the photos I did take last year and processing some, many months after the fact. It’s been fantastic. While I lack photographing inspiration here at home (Yosemite Valley has been beautifully sunny and dry…not particularly thrilling winter conditions), I have put the energy into my hobby in other ways. I’ve revamped some areas of my site (go on and take a look around!), processed some photos I’m quite pleased with, added them to the site, and generally been cleaning house with my photography files and plans.

As I wrap up my work on the website, I begin pondering what I want to photograph this year. Some seasonal photos I’ve been wanting for a while are still on the list. But more immediately, we are on the precipice of the famed Firefall season. And I love chasing that Firefall.

I’ll cut to the chase: there’s pretty much no chance of a Firefall effect on Horsetail Fall this February.

And that happens. Everything has to happen just right, you know? And while we got a TON of snow in December, January was dead dry. February is continuing that trend, and the waterfall is but a wet smear on the shoulder of El Cap, with no precipitation in sight.

I’d first heard of Horsetail’s magical February display in 2014 or 15, when I was but a visitor to these parts. I wished to see it but, alas, I lived on the eastern side of the mountain range, with a front-wheel drive Mini Cooper that wouldn’t be able to handle mountain pass conditions if the weather conditions granted the possibility of the show. I didn’t believe I was destined to see it, not for a long time.

But then I got a job and seeing the show became a lot more feasible. The day before Valentine’s in 2017, my boyfriend (now husband) and I drove out to the western end of the Valley and got caught in the crawling queue of traffic, back when the crowd restrictions allowed for one lane of Northside to be used for parking/pedestrians and you could shoot from the southern bank of the Merced River. We never got the chance to get out of the car, but we got to see the fall as we were passing through the viewing area, and I remember exclaiming, “Oh, wow!” as we caught sight of it. It is truly a spectacular phenomenon. As with almost everything, photos don’t truly do it justice, strive as we might to properly compose, shoot, and process…

I returned on Valentine’s with some work friends who hadn’t seen it yet, and we tarried at the viewing area, amazed, grinning, enjoying the show. I tried to see it a couple other times that year, from the southern riverbank, and got skunked on the day I was taking a visiting friend to see it. Such is life.

I wasn’t invested in photography at that point. Nor the next year, in 2018, when we didn’t even get a showing, as we had an atrociously dry winter (much like this one).

But 2019! 2019 I had my first DSLR and a bargain-bin tripod, and we got absolutely dumped on in early February. I took some friends to the southern riverbank, when it was still open for viewing but no parking allowed, and then my newly minted husband and I snowshoed from the Chapel along the Valley Loop trail to try and find a clear spot to see the fall from. I was already developing a distaste for being in the thick of the crowd of people all getting the same shot, and wondered if it was at all possible to get a little higher off the Valley floor and in a smaller crowd of people.

We succeeded. A little over a mile from the Chapel we came to a little clearing with a nearly clean shot of the waterfall and mountain, and less than half a dozen other people. Intimidated by the clearly more knowledgeable and better equipped other photographers, I set up my budget setup and watched the show.

And what a show! Yosemite rewarded my gambles that day. The photographers nearby had shot the event before and they’d never seen anything like it. The sky was clear—not super unusual but good news for the lighting of the fall—but a strong wind blew from the northeast. It blasted tons of loose powder from the mountaintop, straight into the path of the setting sun’s light. Suddenly this amazing phenomenon of a little bitty waterfall, lit up in a glowing orange, was three times as big, a swirling cascade of fiery mist.

That was the day I shot Raven and Firefall, and that shot caused me to think, you know, maybe I could do this photography thing. Even today, three years later, I look at this image with immense pride. Is it perfect? Nooooooo. But it’s unique. No one else has a shot of the Firefall like this one, and I adore it. I don’t know if Yosemite will ever bless me with another show like this, but even if she doesn’t, I treasure this one and will always be fond of it.

2020 was dry. Just as well, because the world devolved into chaos that year, right? Nevertheless, in anticipation of it maybe happening, NPS placed new restrictions on viewing. No parking, no dropoffs, and no foot traffic along Southside Drive. The southern riverbank viewing area was officially off-limits. Overly optimistic visitors still rushed in, set up for a non-existent show along Northside, I even saw someone set up by the El Cap bridge (which is not where you wanna be for the Firefall effect, just saying). All left disappointed, because there was no waterfall for the effect.

2021 arrived. The pandemic had been a weird time and NPS had experimented with a reservations-only system for the summer, and though they’d rescinded it for the winter, re-implemented it for the Firefall season in an attempt to control the crowds. That…didn’t work. As far as I could tell, they set up reservations based on the amount of cars the whole Park could accommodate, but all those people packed into the Valley, and it was an utter madhouse. I was nearly determined to stay in and avoid it. I’ve developed a love/hate relationship to the phenomenon now; what a beautiful, magical show! But so many people! And this was the year I noticed that, without fail, someone always had to comment on a social media Horsetail photo with some iteration of, “They used to throw fire off of Glacier Point for the original Firefall!” Guys, Ma Nature’s been putting on this show for ages. The piddly little fire show they did for half a century ain’t original, and it’s best left in the history books. You sound old when you tell me about the Glacier Point Firefall. Stop it.

Back on track, I almost didn’t go out to see Horsetail in 2021. I was planning a trip to Death Valley with husband, where we’d meet up with my mother and enjoy the good weather. I don’t remember what prompted me, but I finally talked myself into going out on the eve of our trip to see about a new vantage from which to shoot.

We set out a couple of hours before sunset. The sky was very cloudy, and I set my expectations for no show. Nevertheless I figured I’d scout the area I had in mind, and after a while, my husband and I ducked off-trail to work our way up the slopes of the southern rim of the Valley. After picking our way through the woods for nearly an hour, we stumbled upon a great opening in the tree canopy with a clear shot of El Cap…and a dozen or so other people. Word had gotten out about the higher vantage point, as others have shot from there previously, and it was a Saturday, so I tried to calm my frustrations. It was still much, much better than the (likely) thousand+ person crowd at Northside Drive’s viewing area.

I set up my equipment and fiddled with the settings, the composition, delighted to have the Cathedral Rocks at my disposal as well. I noticed the clouds shifting, openings starting to drift into place at the mouth of the Valley. Would I get it after all? Well, as you can see above, I did indeed. The sky lit up, the horizon and the waterfall glowed, and that massive crowd a mile away across the Valley erupted in cheers that I could hear from my vantage.

I only saw a couple of the other shots from that vantage on that evening, and I remember one of them even being crooked. I took pride in mine again. It’s more of a typical shot, but I still enjoy it because it isn’t the same shot everyone else gets (that ultra-zoomed-in portrait shot of the waterfall and just the waterfall).

And that should bring us up to 2022, this year, yeah?

Except…

Except Yosemite is wonderful.

See, as I’m sure you know, the Earth rotates in such a way that the sun’s position kind of bounces back and forth between points in the sky at sunrise and sunset, from solstice to solstice. So if the sun sets at a particular point in the sky 59 days past the winter solstice, it stands to reason it set there about 59 days prior to the winter solstice on its journey TO the farther point on the solstice.

I’d remembered reading a long time ago that the effect could happen in the Fall season, too, if the waterfall was flowing, because the sun was setting in the same place as in February. Except, the waterfall never flows in the autumn. It’s a gamble every year as to whether or not it’ll flow for February! How could such an ephemeral fall flow in autumn, when the Big Name falls are down to a trickle or even dry? It simply can’t. Unless a massive rainstorm passes through.

The odds of that happening in autumn, with enough water to kickstart the ephemeral waterfalls, in time for the sun to be setting in the portion of the sky where it sets in February, are, well, I don’t know what they are, but it’s EXTREMELY unlikely. People who have been living and working in or near the Park for years can’t recall the last time they witnessed the Firefall effect in the autumn season.

I knew all the factors for the sun. I even did the math and pinpointed the exact day that would line up with the “peak” viewing day in February. Now all I needed was a massive rainstorm.

The thought hung around in the back of my mind, a wishful, wistful sort of, “Wouldn’t that be so cool?” thought, with no real belief behind it. After five years in Yosemite I’d begun to recognize general weather patterns, and I knew that although we might see some rain in October and November, it wouldn’t be enough to wake up Horsetail from the summer slumber, and even less likely in time to catch the sun. But the thought hung around, a fun plaything for my imagination.

Yosemite is wonderful…

A freak storm rolled through. A massive one. It rained, rained hard, a constant downpour, for nearly two days. I rarely see storms like that in Yosemite Valley, and especially at that time of the season. The ephemeral waterfall behind where I work raged. The ephemeral waterfall behind the Ahwahnee, across the Valley, was raging. Water dumping off the cliff faces in every direction. From dry cliffs to Spring-magnitude waterfalls, in the midst of the autumnal colour display, Yosemite put on a unique show for us in autumn 2021.

I remember quietly realizing in awe. It’s possible. As the storm waned I booked it down to the western end of the Valley. Horsetail was running.

It wasn’t the perfect date. In fact it was about a week past, and I wasn’t sure I’d get a great show. But maybe…maybe I’d get a small something. A little bit of the pale yellow-orange glow the waterfall throws off early in its display season in February.

I tried the day the rainstorm let up, and was skunked out by cloud cover on the horizon. Desperate and hopeful, I went back out the next day.

I took full advantage. The viewing area closure for Southside Drive is only in effect for the February season; since a show isn’t expected in autumn, it was perfectly allowed to set up on the southern riverbank of the Merced. So I did. I knew I’d probably never get a chance to shoot from there again, so I took advantage. And I wanted to show off the autumn colours. I looked and looked and found my composition. I was crouched between two trees, my tripod as low as I could get it, barely stable at the very, very edge of the riverbank.

There were only a half a dozen other people there.

And Yosemite hit us with some magic. I don’t know what we did to deserve it, but Yosemite granted us a bonus autumnal Firefall show. I look at this photo today and could cry from happiness. I got a shot no one else can get. I did everything right. I am so, so happy about this photo. It may not be my magnum opus—it’ll probably be awhile before I land on one of those—but it is, for now, my pride and joy. I see behind it all the work I’ve put into this photography hobby, all the hope I have for good conditions, all the forethought I put into possible photographic compositions, and all the absolute wonder and blessing I’ve been granted by being able to live in Yosemite.

The waterfall is dry leading into this year’s Firefall season; once more following the pattern of wet odd-numbered years and dry even-numbered years. I’d been wondering what kind of shot I’d get this year anyway—how can I possibly compare with that show from 2019, or create something as unique as the autumnal shot? I dare to tempt fate and say I can’t. Because every time I think I’ve seen the full extent of the wonder Yosemite can offer, she goes and blows my mind with something new. So fingers crossed!

Even if that doesn’t work; it’s okay. Maybe someday I’ll get that same shot everyone gets. Maybe I’ll just be shooting the same shots in five years, a plain glowing waterfall, snow-dusted landscape around it, maybe some clouds, maybe a little high, maybe a little low. Maybe I’ll stop shooting it. But I can happily agree, it’s magic. And if you don’t mind the crowds, or you don’t mind the effort to find somewhere away from the crowds, it is worth every minute you stand there watching it.

Just please…be careful with where you step. Yosemite is giving us magic. Let’s try to take care of her while we’re admiring it.