You'd have thought that calculating the height of a waterfall would be straightforward, but it's far from it. There's not even an agreement on what constitutes a waterfall.
It's been suggested that the horizontal distance between the top and the bottom of a fall should be no more than 25% of the height, but this would exclude rapids, regarded as a type of waterfall by many. Then, once you've decided that it is a waterfall, you need to establish exactly where it begins and ends – simple with a single drop, but more open to interpretation when a fall descends over a series of steps. And then the volume of water can change things, turning a gentle cascade fall into a surging single-drop torrent.
It's a tricky business, and as such there's…
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Trail United Kingdom (Digital) - 1 Issue, May 2023