Measuring Waterfall Heights

Recently, I have been able to splurge a little and buy a couple items that help measure heights of waterfalls: a laser rangefinder and a clinometer. With these two devices, I can fairly accurately measure a waterfall's height using a trigonometric equation: sine(angle) * distance to waterfall. If I can stand at one location and see the top and bottom of the waterfall, then I can take a distance reading to the top and bottom, and the angle to each. Then use this equation to calculate the waterfall's height. It is not always completely accurate, but for all intents, is pretty darn close. If you are interested in learning more about this calculation, you can go to Scott Ensmingers website here.

So on every waterfall page of my site there is a height listed for the waterfall. If it has a tilde (~) character in front of it, then the height is just a best estimate. I may have been at that waterfall before I purchased the rangefinder/clinometer, or in some cases it is not always possible to get an accurate measurement for a height. If there is no tilde character, then the height listed is an accurate measurement. There may be an error factor of plus/minus a few feet or so, but the actual height should be pretty close.