California’s winter rains are now producing what may be the heaviest spring runoff in a decade. So welcome to the Year of the Waterfall

Here are your clues: Muddy sneakers are accumulating on porches. A thunderous din is heard in the distance. The valley is flooded with damp travelers.

And here is your answer: The storms of last winter, born again in the Sierra Nevada spring thaw, are sending tons of water tumbling down Yosemite’s great, gray canyon walls. The spectacle is not unattractive.

“They’re going great guns right now,” says park ranger Kris Fister, a veteran of a dozen springs here. “I notice more the difference in sound. It seems like Yosemite Falls is so much louder. There’s just a lot more sound of moving water.”

No, there’s nothing new about gravity having its way with water. But all natural acts seem to gain stature when they occur in Yosemite Valley, amid what 19th-Century pioneer Lafayette Bunnell called “the testimony of the rocks.” And right now, a traveler can hardly scan those 3,000-foot granite faces without laying eyes on falling water.

Yosemite claims some of the highest waterfalls in the world (the record goes to 3,212-foot Angel Falls in Venezuela), and all are now in action. In a late March survey of Sierra Nevada snowpacks, rangers found that this national park’s “Merced courses”--ranges that drain down to Bridalveil Fall--were more than 10 feet deep, which is 150% of the average pack through the last five decades. Judging from that and other figures, rangers say this spring and summer runoff will be the greatest since at least 1986, lasting well beyond the usual peak-flow weeks of May and June, in many areas approaching the volume of the heavy runoff year of 1983. My layman’s forecast: mist and roar, day and night.

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Head to the Curry Village shopping area for a cup of coffee on the right spring day, glance up to the rock wall beneath Glacier Point, and there drips Staircase Falls. Following wrinkles in the rock, the water travels earthward 1,300 feet while meandering eastward, in about a dozen, angled Etch-A-Sketch steps, some 1,000 feet.

And if you happen upon this view, you may as well take a moment to enjoy it, because there’s probably a line of people ahead of you waiting for their own cups of coffee. Investigating three of Yosemite’s most famous and accessible falls on a weekend in mid-April, my wife and I found that tourists and cars were already chasing each other around the valley floor in dismaying volume.

Come summer, of course, the volume will rise sharply. And this year’s deep snows mean many high-country campgrounds may not open until July, which is likely to further concentrate tourist traffic in the valley. (At least the crowds can be entertaining. At lunch one day, we spied a suspendered and bearded man, the spitting image of C. Everett Koop, joined by a matronly woman in a T-shirt that read “I’m having a Maalox moment.” Probably these were not the Koops--they left before we could be sure--but it doesn’t matter. From now on, I’m going to carry the image of all the Reagan Administration’s cabinet members lounging through retirement this way.)

But the crowds are part of the Yosemite bargain these days: You reserve your lodgings or campsite well in advance; you pay your $5 park entrance fee, and you expect to either stand among the masses or hike out of their way. To console yourself, think of John Muir loitering in this neighborhood 122 years ago, his long beard dripping as a rare winter rainstorm assaults the valley.

On that day, the rushing rainwaters quickly gathered and cascaded from the cliff tops “in the wildest extravagance, heaping and swelling flood over flood,” Muir wrote. It was, he suggested, “probably the most glorious assemblage of waterfalls ever displayed from any one standpoint.”

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Bridalveil Fall, Friday noon. The view is still glorious, and for waterfall-seekers entering the park from the south, Bridalveil Fall remains the nearest liquid attraction.

But the logistics of getting there have changed plenty since Muir’s mostly pedestrian days. My wife and I enter the valley via rented Chevrolet, having driven half an hour from a $99-a-night Yosemite West condominium located halfway between Yosemite Village and the park’s south entrance. (Valley visitors arriving by car should grab an all-day parking spot, probably in the large lot at Curry Village, and then rely on the free park shuttle service to reach viewpoints, facilities and trail heads. Otherwise, you spend a lot of time jostling for spots, and lose the moral authority to complain about the traffic.)

From the Bridalveil parking lot or the shuttle stop, it’s about a five-minute stroll to the base of the fall, flat enough for a wheelchair user with a little help. The sound of pounding water makes the trail directions clear enough, but just in case we need another clue, a soaked and cheerful codger comes quipping down the trail.

“Take a bar of soap and have a shower,” he suggests, to no one in particular.

Thanks, but we’ll just stand back here and gawk. Though Bridalveil Fall runs far short of the global top 10 waterfall list--in fact, it ranks only ninth-highest in Yosemite--it nevertheless stands 620 feet tall. And Bridalveil is broad and hardy. While its counterparts surge and recede according to the week’s weather and the stores in their sometimes modest watersheds, these waters usually run well year-round. If one were to look uphill from the lip of the fall, its watershed is not only large but includes soil that slows the water’s downhill course to a more gradual pace.

At its bottom, meanwhile, where we stand on a rock-strewn path, thick mist rises in a massive cloud, and a violent current rushes past between rocks. There seems to be more mist rising, in fact, than there is runoff crashing down on the rocks. When this mist is at its thickest, writes author Michael Osborne, “a perfectly circular rainbow is formed.”

Osborne, whose volume “Granite, Water and Light: Waterfalls of the Yosemite Valley” is available for $5.95 at the National Park Service visitor center in Yosemite Village, also suggests that Bridalveil is more attractive in late summer, when its flow is light enough to bend and fold in the wind.

I’m not ready to make such aesthetic distinctions, but I will say this: I’ve never seen a movie murder or chase scene set in the mists of a waterfall, but Bridalveil Fall would be a fine place for one. Light might be a problem, though. It bounces everywhere, filtering in shafts through the mist, reflecting from slick rocks, cast down from the sunlit snowdrifts up the slope.

Since we only have a weekend, we’re not going to get close to Sentinel Falls, Royal Arch Cascade, Silver Strand Fall, El Capitan Falls or any of the many unnamed ephemeral falls now coursing down valley walls. But standing almost directly beneath Bridalveil Fall, we do collect a bonus: the sight of tall, wispy Ribbon Fall, draining ferociously on the opposite north valley wall. Ribbon Fall drops 1,612 feet, which makes it the highest single, uninterrupted waterfall in North America.

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Yosemite Falls, Friday afternoon. This is the park’s headliner waterfall, the easily seen landmark that stands taller than the Washington Monument--taller, in fact, than the Washington Monument set atop the Eiffel Tower, set atop Bridalveil Fall. Upper Yosemite Fall plunges 1,430 feet without interruption, crashes and careens another 675 feet through a recessed gorge, then plunges another 320 feet.

The combined height, my guidebooks say, is 2,425 feet. John Muir--whose voice echoes everywhere in this valley--wrote that these waters seem to spring “in irregular spurts from some grand, throbbing mountain heart.”

From the park’s visitor center, it’s a two-minute shuttle bus ride and a 10-minute walk to the bottom of the Lower Yosemite Fall--from which you can’t see the Upper Fall. (To see the Upper Fall properly, hike around the valley floor awhile until you can bracket the sight of tumbling water with blue skies above and a green meadow below.) But whether you stand near or far, the volume and violence of the water meeting the valley floor, and that epic sound, are enough to make an impression. Especially right now.

Though this year’s rich runoff may extend the fall’s strength, Yosemite Falls’ upper, middle and lower portions usually dwindle to a trickle by late summer--a development that occasionally aggravates visitors uninterested in making allowances for the natural world.

The story is told of New York newspaper editor Horace Greeley--best known these days for his enthusiasm over opportunities offered by the Western U.S.--and his one-day tour of the valley in August, 1859. Evidently, he had been prepared too well. Seeing storied Yosemite Falls at a meager trickle, Greeley dismissed the whole scene as “a humbug.”

He should have come back in winter, when the crunch and boom of falling ice on Upper Yosemite Falls resounds through the valley. An accumulated ice cone grows at the foot of the falls--often more than 200 feet high--and then as temperatures warm, the falls drills a hole in the cone’s center. The cone is usually gone by mid-April, as it was this year.

Like Kris Fister, I may have been struck more by the sound of all that water than by the sight. Pausing on the approach path, my ears registered first a tinny trickle running through gray rocks a few feet away. Then, the even rush of a full creek draining nearby beneath green trees. Finally, underpinning those sounds, the falls rumbled deeply--together, a resounding, organic three-octave liquid chord.

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The Mist Trail, Saturday morning. Glaciers carved Yosemite Valley, slowly and powerfully. They also carved the steps that make up the paths of Vernal and Nevada Falls, and these days those paths unite the runoff from more than 60 high-country lakes.

While all that water runs down the hill, we slog our way up it, trudging in single file through three-inch-deep puddles, sneakers occasionally skidding on slick stones, hands grabbing for the metal rails when the path narrows and the drop off below grows to fatal distances. The Mist Trail, which starts a few yards from the Happy Isles shuttle stop, ascends sharply to reach the top of Vernal Fall after 1.5 miles, the top of Nevada Falls after 3.4 miles. It is among Yosemite’s most popular hikes. (The Park Service’s seasonal guide to Yosemite advises that those bound for Nevada Fall allow six to eight hours for the round trip; those bound for Vernal Fall, two to four hours.)

The view from the rocks beside Vernal Fall takes in pines, boulders, rushing water and a sightly chunk of the valley in the distance, and it’s bracing to watch so much water begin such a dramatic fall from such close range. As falls in the valley go, Vernal is short and stocky: 317 feet high and 80 feet wide. Novelist Helen Hunt Jackson, appreciating the play of sunshine on its mists, late last century called the fall “a carnival of light. Rainbows rioted everywhere.”

But this can be a daunting route. A drizzly rain greets us as we pick our way along the final, narrow, rocky, steep and crowded 200 yards beneath Vernal Fall. The path is so crowded that if a hiker ahead pauses to catch an extra breath, we are obliged to do the same. If a climber ever fell back in just the wrong way on such a day, I can foresee a whole line of hikers cast back like multicolored dominoes, arms flailing, telephoto lenses crashing down into the rapids. Maybe that would reduce the crowds for a while--but probably not.

After an hour’s hike to reach the top of Vernal Fall, we settle on a patch of hard granite to munch our sandwiches and eavesdrop on the members of Boy Scout Troop 110 of Union City, which is near Fremont, which is near San Francisco. Many of the boys, aged 10-15, are eager to climb higher. Their scoutmasters think not, and point out that the storm clouds that made our ascent so, ah, interesting, could be dumping snow in the high country and treacherous rains on the hiking paths immediately above. Now we, too, think not.

So instead of displaying our valor and expertise on the slick path above, we descend, and repair to the Ahwahnee Hotel dining room. There we sip tea, spoon soup, and admire the spring showers through large, elegant, well-sealed windows. Sure, the spectacle of falling water is a thing of beauty, but these things can be taken too far. And hey, what’s so bad about a hot snack on a wet day?

Yosemite Valley Waterfalls

Yosemite Falls 2,425 feet North wall, eastern end Sentinel Falls 2,000 feet South wall, west of Sentinel Rock Ribbon Fall 1,612 feet North wall, west of El Capitan Staircase Falls 1,300 feet South wall, behind Curry Village Royal Arch Cascade 1,250 feet North wall, west of Washington Column Silver Strand Fall 1,170 feet South wall, far west end El Capitan Falls 1,000 feet North wall, east side of El Capitan Lehamite Falls uncertain East wall of Indian Canyon Bridalveil Fall 620 feet South wall, west end Nevada Fall 594 feet Eastern end, Merced River Canyon The Cascades 500 feet North wall of Merced River Canyon Illouette Fall 370 feet Panorama cliffs, southeast of Glacier Point Vernal Fall 317 feet East of Happy Isles, Merced River Canyon

Source: National Park Service.

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A Magnificent Seven

Seven prominent California falls outside Yosemite National Park:

Burney Falls. Located in McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park, 64 miles east of Redding, Burney Falls cascades over a 129-foot cliff into a pool at its base. President Theodore Roosevelt is said to have called Burney Falls “the eighth wonder of the world.” Contact: McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park, Route 1, Box 1260, Burney 96013, (916) 335-2777.

Darwin Falls. The 30-foot waterfall lies about 75 miles north of Ridgecrest in a canyon oasis surrounded by the Mojave Desert. More than 79 bird species have been sighted there. Contact: Ridgecrest Resource Area, 300 S. Richmond Road, Ridgecrest 93555, (619) 375-7125.

Feather Falls. Located in the Sierra Nevada foothills, 25 miles east of Oroville, Feather Falls is the featured attraction of the 15,000-acre Feather Falls Scenic Area. At a height of 640 feet, Feather Falls is the sixth-highest waterfall in the continental United States, the fourth-highest in California. Contact: U.S. Forest Service, Plumas National Forest, La Porte Ranger District, P.O. Drawer 369, Challenge 95925, (916) 675-2462.

McCloud Falls. These three falls (Upper, Middle and Lower McCloud falls) lie within two miles of each other and are accessible by car. McCloud Falls run about 60 miles northeast of Redding near the old lumber town of McCloud. Contact: Shasta Cascade Wonderland Assn., 1250 Parkview Ave., Redding 96001, (800) 326-6944.

Mossbrae Falls. Located near Dunsmuir, 54 miles north of Redding, Mossbrae Falls is fed by the glaciers of Mt. Shasta. Though situated on property owned by Southern Pacific, the waterfall is accessible to the public. Contact: Shasta Cascade Wonderland Assn., 1250 Parkview Ave., Redding 96001, (800) 326-6944.

Pfeiffer Falls. Located in Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, 26 miles south of Carmel, the 60-foot Pfeiffer Falls can be found at the end of the trail that follows Pfeiffer-Redwood Creek. The trail to the waterfall features some of the finest redwood groves in the Big Sur region. Contact: Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, Big Sur 93920, (408) 667-2315.

Potem Creek Falls. Located 41 miles northeast of Redding, Potem Creek Falls empties into the Pit River. A recently constructed trail has made the waterfall much more accessible to hikers. Contact: Shasta Cascade Wonderland Assn., 1250 Parkview Ave., Redding 96001, (800) 326-6944.

Source: Fred Sater, California Office of Tourism.

GUIDEBOOK

Falling for Yosemite

Getting there: Yosemite is 309 miles north of Los Angeles, a six- to eight-hour drive. Take Interstate 5 north to California 99 north. At Fresno, take California 41 north into the park.

For those flying, Fresno’s airport is the closest major terminal to Yosemite (57 miles away), but fares to San Francisco are enough cheaper, particularly if you can’t get the very cheapest Fresno fares, that it may be worth the extra driving time (193 miles, a four- to five-hour drive). Delta, United, USAir and American airlines offer nonstop round-trip flights between LAX and Fresno; the cheapest restricted fares now start at $180. United, Delta and USAir fly nonstop between LAX and San Francisco; cheapest restricted round-trip fares start at $98.

Driving from San Francisco to Yosemite, take California 580 east to California 205, then California 120 east into the park. The park entrance fee is $5 for most automobiles, good for a week’s stay.

Where to stay: For those who want to sleep under the stars, the park includes roughly 1,900 campsites in various areas. Nightly rates run $4-$12, with seven-day limit in summer, 30 days the rest of the year. To reserve a site (no more than eight weeks in advance for family sites, 12 weeks for group sites), phone (800) 365-2267 or write MISTIX, P.O. Box 85705, San Diego 92186-5705.

For maximum comfort, there are the park’s two old hotels--but beware, they’re booked way ahead. The Ahwahnee, woodsy yet elite, centrally located in Yosemite Valley, sets its peak-season rates at $208 per room. The Wawona Hotel, historic, convenient to golf, and near the park’s southern entrance, asks $86.25 for rooms with baths, $63.25 for a room without.

For reservations at either, call (209) 252-4848 (see this week’s Travel Insider column on L2 for tips on getting through) or write Yosemite Reservations, 5410 E. Home Ave., Fresno 93727.

My wife and I stayed at Yosemite West Condominiums (for reservations: 5410 E. Home Ave., Fresno 93727; 209-454-2033), midway between the park’s southern entrance and Yosemite Village. Rates run $59-$99, depending on the room and season. For $99, we got a loft unit of semi-slipshod construction (sloppy paint job, use of fireplace forbidden pending repairs), but with a full kitchen, kitchenware and a fine view of pine-studded slopes. Helpful manager. Probably a good choice for families; the unit could sleep as many as six.

The Yosemite Marriott Tenaya Lodge (1122 Highway 41, Fish Camp 93623; 800-635-5807) is two miles south of the park’s southern entrance. The interior isn’t as unattractive as the exterior (which would look at home near any airport), and there is an indoor pool and exercise area. Standard nightly rates until June 13: $179-$189, breakfast included. From June 13 through summer: $210-$215. Some discounts available.

Where to eat: The Ahwahnee dining room seats 425, with Indian rugs on the walls, stained glass set in the windows and massive wooden beams. You dress for dinner--a bother, if you’ll be in outdoorswear the rest of the time--but breakfasts and lunches are good and reasonably priced (lunch entrees $6.50-$12). And there’s no minimum, so you could theoretically order a $1.65 cup of tea and admire the place. (If you must do that, have pity on your server; tip about 100%.)

The Wawona Hotel dining room is one-quarter the size of the Ahwahnee dining room, and commensurately intimate. Two walls are all window panes. Children are welcome and well-handled, and Sunday brunch is a bargain at $9.87.

For more information: Yosemite National Park offers general information, including road and weather conditions, at (209) 372-0200.