Photoclubalpha

A couple of days ago we went to the frozen 白猪の滝 (Shirai no taki) waterfall in Ehime-ken and it was magnificent! It is a big, cascading waterfall that has frozen in the current cold weather. I have only seen photos of frozen waterfalls before so this was my first time to see one. Very cool! Here is one photo to give some scale. All that white you see is ice!



Here is a photo from the base (near where the people in the photo above are standing) of the main part of the waterfall...I mean, icefall.





This guy was there for a long time with the front leg of his tripod submerged in the water and it had already frozen all around it. He was there when I arrived at the falls after a bit of a hike on an icy trail and and he was still there an hour later when I left.





It snowed yesterday so probably the mountain with the waterfall has snow on it now.

Wow. That is amazing Henry. Great to see in pictures but it must have been an even better thing to see in person.

Impressive pictures Henry, especially the first one and the photographer frozen at the foot of that fall.
Gives me some ideas for a hike as well, I should be able to see one myself also for the first time now. It´s far below 0ºC in Lausanne and lasting (right now: -10.3ºC), while beautiful ´blue sky´ weather, time to find one I guess. Hope I will be lucky.

Beautiful pictures.

+1

Birma wrote:Wow. That is amazing Henry. Great to see in pictures but it must have been an even better thing to see in person.

Yes, it was a wonderful sight! It was pretty cold that day and about a 1.5 hour drive so we almost didn't go. Then there was a bit of a hike on an uphill, icy trail. We had to tie straw to our shoes to provide traction -- it is the traditional way and someone had left some dry straw beside the trail near the beginning as a nice favor and service for other people. As you can see there were a few other people around, but not that many. We were there in the morning when it was colder, but probably later in the day there were more people. It turns out that the TV reported the frozen waterfall that evening so probably after that it would be very crowded there and hard to get photos. People have told me that in prior years when it has frozen there were so many people that they had to give up and go home without even seeing it because there was no place to park their car and the road was so packed. We were quite lucky to go on Thursday morning before the word got out.

Jasper_D wrote:Impressive pictures Henry, especially the first one and the photographer frozen at the foot of that fall.
Gives me some ideas for a hike as well, I should be able to see one myself also for the first time now. It´s far below 0ºC in Lausanne and lasting (right now: -10.3ºC), while beautiful ´blue sky´ weather, time to find one I guess. Hope I will be lucky.

Yes, I imagine that in Switzerland in winter it should not be too hard to find a frozen waterfall. I hope you can see one. It was very impressive!

In 2005 I rode the Jungfraubahn cog railway when I was in Interlaken to the top of Jungfrau. The snow and ice up there were so beautiful as was the view of the snow covered Alps.

Good one Henry, I guess it’s a gradual process, the water coming down at a rate versus temperature that can freeze at some part of the journey and therefore a gradual build up of ice, it certainly is amazing seeing waterfall that looks like it was snap frozen in mid fall ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ fashion where people were snap frozen in mid stride.
Greg
Ps If you reckon it was cold then it was most likely far too cold for this little black duck.

Very nice, Henry. : )

A most interesting sight indeed. No frozen waterfalls or streams here to examine closer.

The past few days I've read about Frozen-Waterfall-Climbers and saw a couple of photos where the climbers felt fine climbing on vertical glassy ice...Hanging by the mercy of the single appearance of the sun's rays....

Your waterfall has a more photogenic integration into the landscape where it appears like a carved fragile crystal Japanese miniature which I saw them sell at gift shops. Not for climbers, this one.

Thanks for sharing,

Yildiz

Greg Beetham wrote:Good one Henry, I guess it’s a gradual process, the water coming down at a rate versus temperature that can freeze at some part of the journey and therefore a gradual build up of ice, it certainly is amazing seeing waterfall that looks like it was snap frozen in mid fall ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ fashion where people were snap frozen in mid stride.

Coincidentally, last night I was watching the last part of an NHK TV program and they were showing how a waterfall freezes. They had time-elapse video showing the gradual freezing of the waterfall and also video from a small, radio controlled helicopter with a video camera that showed what was happening from various angles, including from above. They also had video made with a thermal camera that showed different colors depending on the temperature of each area of the waterfall. It turns out that it is the mist that freezes first, as one would expect, which then builds up gradually.

aster wrote:Very nice, Henry. : )

A most interesting sight indeed. No frozen waterfalls or streams here to examine closer.

The past few days I've read about Frozen-Waterfall-Climbers and saw a couple of photos where the climbers felt fine climbing on vertical glassy ice...Hanging by the mercy of the single appearance of the sun's rays....

Your waterfall has a more photogenic integration into the landscape where it appears like a carved fragile crystal Japanese miniature which I saw them sell at gift shops. Not for climbers, this one.

Yes, I was content to not venture onto the ice and try to climb up.

Here are a couple more closer views of the ice:

Love the second set as well, Henry. : ))

Especially the vertical second shot is very photogenic in composition; a good selection of the whole waterfall. Looking almost spider-web-fragile with its fine details of glassy parts.

Thanks for sharing,

Yildiz

aster wrote:Love the second set as well, Henry. : ))

Especially the vertical second shot is very photogenic in composition; a good selection of the whole waterfall. Looking almost spider-web-fragile with its fine details of glassy parts.

Yes, the detail of the frozen ice was very interesting. I have no idea if I will ever see a frozen waterfall again so I was glad that I was able to this time. If I lived in a cold country then I probably would have seen one by now already, but I am not in ice and snow that often. I used to love to ski, but it has been years since I was around places where I could fairly easily do that. Even then though I never saw a waterfall like this.