Angel Falls
Salto Ángel
Interesting facts
- Jimmie Angel's ashes were scattered over the falls that bear his name on 2 July 1960.
- Aleksandrs Laime named the river above the falls Gauja, after a Latvian river, on Latvian independence day in 1955, and the name entered Venezuela's official maps.
- The first climb of the cliff, in January 1971, took a four-man team nine and a half days up and a day and a half to abseil down.
- Earlier climbs failed on slippery rock in the wet season of 1968 and, a year later, on an overhang about 120 m below the top.
- The 979 m total includes about 400 m of sloping cascades and rapids and a final 30 m plunge below the main free fall.
- The name Salto del Ángel first appeared on a Venezuelan government map in December 1939.
- In 2009 President Hugo Chávez proposed renaming the falls with a Pemon name, though he later stopped short of decreeing the change.
- Laime was also the first to reach the top of the falls, in the late 1950s, and found Angel's stranded plane 18 years after it landed.
- Pixar's Paradise Falls in the 2009 film Up was modelled on Angel Falls.
- The first BASE jump came in 1983: Max Botto leapt first, but Jerry Bird opened his parachute later and touched down before him.
Why it is worth it
Angel Falls drops from the rim of Auyán-tepui, one of the sheer-sided table mountains of south-eastern Venezuela, and is generally ranked as the tallest uninterrupted waterfall in the world: a total height of 979 metres, of which 807 metres is a single free fall. The rest is a steep run of cascades and rapids below the main drop. Because both it and South Africa's Tugela Falls were measured from a distance, the record is not beyond dispute. The stream feeds the Churún River, a tributary of the Carrao, which in turn drains to the Orinoco. The falls lie in Canaima National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site covering much of the Gran Sabana region of Bolívar State.
The Pemon people call it Kerepakupai Merú, the waterfall of the deepest place. The English name comes from Jimmie Angel, an American pilot who flew over the falls on 16 November 1933 while searching for a valuable ore deposit. In 1937 he returned and tried to land on top of the tepui; the wheels of his monoplane sank into the marshy ground, and he and three companions, his wife among them, spent eleven days walking down off the plateau. The aircraft stayed up there for 33 years before being lifted out by helicopter and restored; it now stands outside the airport of Ciudad Bolívar. The Latvian explorer Aleksandrs Laime reached the base of the falls in 1946 and cut the trail that is still used, and an expedition financed by the journalist Ruth Robertson surveyed the official height in 1949. The face itself was first climbed in 1971.
Seeing the falls is an expedition rather than an excursion. There are no roads: visitors fly into Canaima, a small settlement beside the Carrao rapids, and continue upriver by boat with Pemon guides, then walk from the Isla Ratón camp to the viewpoint named after Laime. River trips depend on water levels and generally run from about June to December; in the dry season, roughly December to March, the flow shrinks and the curtain of water can thin to a wisp. Sightseeing flights over the falls from Canaima are the other way to see them.
Getting there
Canaima Airport (CAJ), about 46 km downstream from the falls, is the gateway; flights to it come from Ciudad Bolívar, Puerto Ordaz and Caracas-Maiquetía. The nearest town of any size by the map, El Dorado, is about 129 km away and of no practical use for a visit. From Canaima the approach is by river and on foot with a licensed operator.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Angel Falls is a waterfall in Venezuela. It is the world's tallest uninterrupted waterfall, with a height of 979 metres (3,212 ft), and a plunge of 807 m (2,648 ft). The waterfall drops over the edge of the Auyán-tepui mountain in the Canaima National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Gran Sabana region of Bolívar State. The height figure, 979 m (3,212 ft), mostly consists of the main plunge but also includes about 400 metres (1,300 ft) of sloped cascade and rapids below the drop and then a 30-metre-high (100 ft) plunge downstream of these talus rapids.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
5.97006, -62.53622per Wikidata