80 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CALIFORNIA 
On the Formation of Ice-pellets or Hail, in the Spray 
of Yosemite Fall. 
BY PROFESSOR W. H. BREWER. 
On Wednesday last, April 19th, in company with Mr. Galen Clark (under 
the Commissioners, custodian of Yosemite Valley), I visited the foot of the 
upper Yosemite Fall. In the winter, a great ice-cone forms in front of this 
fall, mostly, it is probable, an accumulation of frozen spray. It is now 
much reduced by thawing from what it was a month ago. At our visit, it 
extended below the fall several hundred feet, bridging the chasm to an 
unknown thickness. The two persons most familiar with it, respectively 
estimated its thickness that day at ‘‘ sixty to one hundred feet,’’ and ‘“‘ nearer 
two hundred feet.’’ The outer side of this ‘‘cone’’ slopes away from the fall; 
the inner side rises like a wall in front of the sheet, which falls mostly 
behind it with deep, thunderous sound; the water flows beneath the mass, 
and emerges from an icy arch at its foot, which arch in shape and appearance 
strongly reminds one of the ice-arch in the foot of the glacier at the source of 
the Arveiron, at Mt. Blanc. 
The stream was so high from the melting of the snow, that it dropped from 
the extreme top, not clinging to the rounded crest, as it does when the water 
is lower, but leaping out so that the actual leap is perhaps fully 1550 feet to 
the rocky bottom, and to the top of the ‘‘ice-cone,’’ nearly or quite 1500 feet. 
Over the ice-cone the spray is furiously driven by the powerful air-blast 
produced by the fall. 
The day was warm and clear, the time of observation between 12 m. and 
12.30 p.m., and the fall in its brightest illumination, as it faces nearly south. 
As we neared the ice-cone, certain appearances suggested to me that the spray 
which drifted over it was (in part, at least) snow. To examine this, we 
ventured on this cone farther than strict prudence dictated, and in the 
tempest, which stung our hands and faces like shot, we found the spray in 
part to be hail, or ice-pellets. The exact character of these pellets could not 
be studied in the blinding blast to which we were subjected. They appeared 
to be hard, like hail-stones, tolerably uniform in size, and I estimated them 
at about one-tenth of an inch in diameter. They accumulated quite copiously 
on our clothes, but most so towards our feet, as if they were most abundantly 
hurled along near the ice on which we stood. They also accumulated in thin 
sheets on the rocks which rose through the ice near its edge. 
The ice-cone, which had been very white during the winter, had been 
sullied by sand and dirt carried over it withthe spray in the heavy storm of 
the previous week. Near its lower edge, however, were many depressions 
filled with what appeared to be new and pure snow, which we believed to be in 
reality fresh accumulations of these ice-pellets, but from their position it was 
impossible to examine them. We however pushed our way back to the rocky 
