Rainbow Falls: Where the River Catches the Sun
Near Mammoth Lakes, California
A short walk downstream from Devils Postpile, the Middle Fork of the San Joaquin River gathers itself and drops off a cliff of hard volcanic rock. This is Rainbow Falls, plunging about one hundred one feet into a deep green pool, the tallest waterfall on this stretch of river. It earns its name on sunny summer afternoons.
As the water shatters on the rocks below, it throws up a cloud of fine mist, and when sunlight strikes that mist at just the right angle, the tiny droplets bend and split the light into bands of color. A rainbow appears to hang in the spray, sometimes a full arc, and it seems to shift and float as you move along the overlook. The reason the falls exist at all traces back to the same volcanic history that built Devils Postpile.
The river here flows over a layer of tough, erosion-resistant lava rock, and where that hard rock ends, the water has carved a plunge over the edge. Below the falls, the trail continues to a lower, smaller cascade. If you time your visit for late morning or midday in summer, when the sun is high and the flow is strong, you will have the best chance of catching the rainbow that gives this place its name.
