A handful of Yosemite Valley visitors were witness to a powerful rockfall this week on El Capitan.
The rocks began tumbling just before noon Monday on a portion of the cliff just below Horsetail Fall, according to Scott Gediman, a spokesman for Yosemite National Park.
“I heard such a loud burst of thunder and looked up as I saw a giant piece of El Capitan begin to plummet from the side of the mountain,” videographer Alex J. Wood told ViralHog, which gathers and licenses video content.
“I immediately started to film as I realized this was a once-in-a-lifetime event,” he added. “The dust clouds stayed for quite a long while after, and there were only about ten of us witnessing the rock fall.”
Gediman said as rockfalls go, Monday’s wasn’t remarkable to park veterans. “Everything was fine, no one was hurt,” he said. “Rockfalls happen every day. Sometimes we hear about them, sometimes we don’t.”
He said the rockfall did not affect Horsetail Fall. The last fall at Horsetail was in 2017, Gediman added.