Amazing

They discovered a 400 foot waterfall in California.

That's amazing to me. As much as I'd love for it to still be the eighteenth century (although, if we can go back that far, I'd push to just go back to the sixteenth) I would've guessed that modern day Lewises and Clarkes would have trouble finding anything new.

It's nice to think that there are still wonders to be discovered. They're going to have to be really well hidden, though -- After all, we have high definition satellite images that can tell if somone on the ground has his shoelaces untied. Which is, after all, how this waterfall was discovered.

Excerpts:

"It wasn't on a map, no one on the trail crew knew about it. People who been here 27 years had never seen it," said [park superintendent Jim] Milestone, who is leading an effort to clear a trail to the newly named Whiskeytown Falls.

In the spring of 2003, [Wildlife Biologist Russ Weatherbee] was looking at global imaging system maps on his computer when he saw a stretch in the creek that dropped in altitude quickly with a sliver of white leading through it.

"I thought, 'That looks like white water to me,"' he said.

Since Weatherbee's discovery, a handful of rangers and park guests have made the nearly two-mile hike to the falls. The trek veers off a well-trodden trail and follows an eroding logging road through thick brush and manzanita, an evergreen shrub found in the West.

Link to CNN webpage