60 Fun Facts About Angel Falls

Angel Falls holds which world record?

Its 979-metre total height includes about 400 metres of sloped cascade and a final 30-metre plunge below the main drop.

What is the officially quoted total height of Angel Falls in metres?

That works out to 3,212 feet, though the survey behind the figure was taken from a considerable distance and is still debated.

How long is the main uninterrupted plunge of Angel Falls, in metres?

The plunge alone is 2,648 feet, and it is this single drop, not the total height, that nobody seriously disputes.

Angel Falls lies inside which Venezuelan national park?

The park was established in 1962 and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994.

Which Venezuelan state contains Angel Falls?

Bolívar is the largest of Venezuela's 23 states by area, covering more than a quarter of the country.

Angel Falls is named after Jimmie Angel. What was he?

The Spanish name Salto Ángel derives from his surname, not from any religious association.

In which year did Jimmie Angel first fly over the falls?

The falls were not known to the outside world until that flight on 16 November.

What was Jimmie Angel searching for when he first flew over the falls?

The tepui's own article describes him as a bush pilot searching for gold ore when the discovery happened by accident.

What went wrong when Angel tried to land on top of the tepui in October 1937?

The touchdown itself succeeded, but the plane nose-dived when it hit soft ground at the end of its landing run.

How many days did Angel's party take to walk down off the tepui after the crash?

The party of four, including Angel's wife Marie, went down the gently sloping back side to the settlement of Kamarata.

What was the name of the Flamingo monoplane Angel crash-landed on the summit?

The plane was named for the river that drains the region and now supplies most of Venezuela's hydroelectric power.

For how many years did Angel's plane stay on top of the tepui before being lifted off?

Venezuelan military helicopters disassembled it and brought it down in 1970.

Where was Angel's restored plane put on display after its 1970 recovery from the tepui?

It was restored at the aviation museum in Maracay before going on outdoor display in front of the terminal at Ciudad Bolívar airport.

What happened at the falls on 2 July 1960?

Angel died in 1956; his remains were first interred at a shrine in Burbank, California, before his family honoured his wish.

Which Latvian explorer was the first recorded European to reach the base of the falls?

Local people knew him as Alejandro Laime; he later cleared the trail tourists still use to reach the foot of the falls.

Laime named the stream that feeds Angel Falls after which Latvian river?

He announced the name on Latvian independence day in 1955 and named three other summit rivers after the Venta, Daugava and Ogre.

What is Mirador Laime?

It is the spot from which most photographs of the falls are taken, on the path from the Churún River to the base.

Which American journalist financed the 1949 expedition that fixed the official height?

Her expedition, which set out on 23 April 1949, was also the first to reach the foot of the falls.

Robertson's article on the world's highest waterfall appeared in which magazine in 1949?

The piece was titled "Jungle Journey to the World's Highest Waterfall" and ran in the November 1949 issue.

Robertson was earlier the first woman photographer allowed on the infield of which ballpark?

That was in 1943; the next year she was the only female photographer at both national political conventions.

In which year was the face of Angel Falls first climbed to the top?

Attempts in 1968 and 1969 failed on slippery rock and then on a lack of water; the successful climb ended on 13 January.

How long did the first successful ascent of the cliff face take?

Coming down was faster: the four-man team rappelled to the bottom in a day and a half.

George Bogel, who led the first ascent, was an electrical engineer from which city?

David Nott's book Angel's Four gives an account of the climb.

What stopped the 1969 dry-season climbing attempt near the summit?

The climbers also ran short of water; the previous year's wet-season attempt had failed for the opposite reason, slippery rock.

Who was the first person to leap from Angel Falls, in November 1983?

American Jerry Bird jumped after Botto but opened his parachute later, so he actually landed first.

Paradise Falls in which Pixar film was inspired mainly by Angel Falls?

Director Pete Docter and eleven Pixar artists visited the tepuis of the park in 2004 to sketch and paint.

On the Pixar research trip, Docter's team spent three days reaching which tepui?

Docter said the real rocks and plants were so strange that audiences would not have believed them on screen.

Which 2015 action remake shows characters free-climbing beside Angel Falls?

Edgar Ramirez and Luke Bracey are shown climbing the sheer rock next to the falls and then diving from the top.

Which 1998 Robin Williams film, set in Venezuela, shows Angel Falls?

The fantasy romance also starred Cuba Gooding Jr. and Annabella Sciorra.

Which 1990 creature feature was partly set at Angel Falls?

The film's fictional Californian town borrows the national park's name, and its jungle scenes were shot there.

In which 1956 film narrated by Lowell Thomas was Angel Falls counted as a wonder?

Nearly three decades later, an ABC Ripley's Believe It or Not! segment covered the 1983 BASE-jump expedition.

What did Hugo Chávez announce he intended to do about the falls in 2009?

He argued the nation's most famous landmark should carry an indigenous name, though he later said he would not decree the change.

The indigenous name Kerepakupai Merú is said to mean what?

Chávez reportedly said the falls were indigenous land long before Angel ever arrived there.

What does the name Auyán-tepui mean in the local indigenous language?

The word tepui itself carries the same meaning; the mountain was considered dangerous and was avoided by local people.

Which indigenous people live in the national park around Angel Falls?

They belong to the Carib language group and believe the tepuis are home to spirits called Mawari.

Water from Angel Falls ultimately reaches which great river?

The route runs down the Churún and then the Caroní before reaching the great river's delta on the Atlantic.

The Churún River below the falls is a tributary of which river?

The Churún has carved the huge Devil's Canyon that cuts into Auyán-tepui from the north.

In which year did UNESCO make the park containing Angel Falls a World Heritage Site?

The park had been created in 1962 and enlarged in 1975 to take in the Gran Sabana.

The national park containing Angel Falls is roughly the same size as which country?

At about 30,000 square kilometres it is also comparable to Maryland and ranks among the six largest national parks in the world.

Roughly what share of the park containing Angel Falls is covered by tepui plateaus?

The flat-topped mountains have vertical walls and are millions of years old.

Tepuis such as Auyán-tepui are made mainly of which rock?

The Precambrian quartz sandstone sits on an even older granite basement nearly three billion years old.

The tepui rock formed when South America and Africa were part of which supercontinent?

The plateau began to erode and fragment about 300 million years ago, leaving the tepuis as isolated remnants.

Because of their unique species, tepuis are often compared to which islands?

Their summits are ecological islands, home to carnivorous pitcher plants and frogs found nowhere else.

Which South African cataract disputes the Venezuelan claim to the world's tallest?

A 2016 Czech expedition measured Tugela at 983 metres, but its drop is split into five tiers, the tallest just 411 metres.

Angel Falls' uninterrupted drop is described as how many times higher than Niagara Falls?

Niagara is far larger by volume, but its drop is measured in tens of metres rather than hundreds.

Which Elizabethan explorer is dubiously claimed as the first European to see the falls?

He was searching for El Dorado and described what may have been a tepui, but historians treat the claim with scepticism.

Which Spanish explorer is credited by some sources with seeing the falls in 1927?

Others name Fernando de Berrío, a colonial governor of the 16th and 17th centuries, as the first European visitor.

River trips to the base of the falls generally run during which months?

Only then are the rivers deep enough for the local guides' boats; in the dry season the falls carry far less water.

In which country did Jimmie Angel die in 1956?

He hit his head landing his plane at David, Chiriquí, and died months later of pneumonia in Panama City.

What is the title of Alberto Vázquez-Figueroa's 1998 novel about Jimmie Angel?

Italian explorer Folco Quilici's Cielo verde, from the year before, was also inspired by Angel's story.

Besides Angel Falls, which other very high waterfall lies inside the same national park?

Kukenán Falls drops 629 metres from Kukenán-tepui and ranks among the ten highest waterfalls in the world.

The Churún River has carved which vast valley into Auyán-tepui's summit plateau?

The heart-shaped plateau tilts from about 1,600 m in the northwest to 2,450 m in the southeast and hides extensive cave systems.

Roughly how large is Auyán-tepui's summit area?

That makes it one of the largest tepuis in the Guiana Highlands, though not the highest, and by far the most visited.

Where did Jimmie Angel's party come down off the tepui after their 11-day trek in 1937?

Aboard the stranded plane were his wife Marie, Gustavo Heny and Heny's gardener Miguel Delgado; all four escaped unharmed.

In which US state was Jimmie Angel born in 1899?

Christened James Crawford Angel, he went by Crawford as a boy to avoid confusion with his grandfather and only adopted 'Jimmie' in his twenties.

Where were Jimmie Angel's ashes first interred before being scattered over the falls in 1960?

He died in Panama in December 1956, months after a head injury suffered while landing his plane at David, Chiriquí.

In which year was Canaima National Park, home of Angel Falls, established?

The 30,000 sq km park is Venezuela's second largest and reaches the borders with Brazil and Guyana.

The Pemon people believe the tepuis are home to which spirits?

The Pemon belong to the Carib linguistic group, and rock art in the park predates their arrival by thousands of years.

About how many tepuis stand in Venezuela's Gran Sabana, the region with the world's highest concentration?

Together they cover only about 5,000 sq km, yet tower up to 1,000 metres above the surrounding jungle.

Roughly how many million years ago did the tepuis form from the eroding sandstone plateau?

The plateau itself began to erode about 300 million years ago; the mesas are what remained standing.