| |
| Westerly View - Middle Brother | |
  ooking westerly you see the stunning outline of the Three Brothers formation, a close packed series of three jagged peaks composed of fractured and peeling granite. The Middle Brother has historically been the site of the Valley's most active and largest rockfalls. On March 10th, 1987 Park historian Jim Snyder and Ranger Phil Hibbs happened to be standing below Middle Brother almost directly under the largest rockfall in recent memory.
 Jim described it as; "the cliff unfolding like the stairs of an escalator. As it separated from the crag, the block itself broke up into huge, three dimensional parallelograms.... These blocks hit the ledges below at different rates, creating many distinct crashes within the roar of the overall slide...." This Middle Brother rockfall event displaced a total of nearly a million and a half tons of rock. In July 1996 the Happy Isles Rockfall resulted in one death and several injuries.
 Rockfall potential, like flooding, traffic, and air quality, is a key consideration for park management in designing areas to relocate visitor services and park operations. Rockfall zones and the flood plain  limits the area on the Valley floor where safe development and transportation can occur. Traffic and related congestion and air quality problems will be mitigated by the implementation of an expanded visitor shuttle service during peak visitor season.
Next - West: Beyond Yosemite Valley... |
Click on a choice:
|
|
© 2003 Delphi International.
All Rights Reserved.
|
