"Muffled in afternoon fog, Yosemite Valley's Bridalveil Fall drops 620 feet [188 meters] to delight spectators. A fast-moving stream flowing seaward down the uplifted Sierra block first carved the valley into a V shape. Frost and glaciers, the great sculptors of Yosemite in ice ages past, later sheared off this granite cliff face, leaving the stream above nowhere to go but straight down, as a graceful veil of water."
—From the National Geographic book Range of Light: The Sierra Nevada, 1999
