Angel Falls dropping from Auyán-tepui

Angel Falls dropping from Auyán-tepui is an original illustration set in Angel Falls, Canaima National Park, Venezuela. It lies in equatorial latitudes, where the climate is tropical rainforest — hot and wet all year.

Angel Falls descends as one extremely long white thread from the sheer rust-red wall of Auyán-tepui, breaking into mist before reaching dense emerald rainforest. The mountain has a broad flat summit, dark horizontal rock bands and several smaller wet streaks, while a winding brown-green river and tiny canoe silhouettes establish the immense scale below.

Why does this waterfall plunge almost uninterrupted from a flat-topped mountain?

Tepuis are isolated remnants of ancient sandstone plateaus whose resistant cap rocks stand above deeply eroded tropical lowlands. Heavy equatorial rain gathers on the broad summit and reaches the abrupt cliff edge with almost no gentler slope to interrupt its descent. The water therefore falls freely for most of its height, dispersing into spray in wind before feeding forest streams at the base; repeated erosion also keeps the mountain walls near vertical and the summit strikingly level.

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