1949 ANGEL FALLS Venezuela magazine article, excursion, natives color photos

Description

Selling is a 1949 magazine article about:
Angel Falls Venezuela
Title: Jungle Journey to the World’s Highest Waterfall
Author: Ruth Robertson
This article is about the authors 1949 excursion to the falls.
From the first page: SPURTING from a cliff more than half a mile high in the jungle fastnesses of eastern Venezuela is Angel Falls, world's highest waterfall, 15 times higher than Niagara Falls or, by another yardstick, more than twice the height of the Empire State Building. Its first drop is 2,648 feet; its total 3,212.
I saw it the first time from the co-pilot's seat of an old unconverted C-47 just two years ago as we flew over this weirdly beautiful high jungle between the Orinoco and Amazon Rivers. On that flight to Auyan-tepui, so-called Devil Mountain, I shot more than a dozen Kodachromes in the dead-end Angel Falls canyon.
As we flew over the dense jungle floor of the canyon, I resolved someday to enter that canyon valley on foot to get photographs from the base of Angel Falls and to determine its exact height.
From almost impenetrable jungle rear mesas like mighty fortresses a mile to two miles high, their sides and flat tops eroded into queer shapes.
This part of Venezuela suggests the setting of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World, of W. H. Hudson's Green Mansions, of L. R. Dennison's Devil Mountain, and some of those tag names still stick to the area. But Venezuelans and the pilots who fly south of the Orinoco on their jungle runs call it simply the Gran Sabana-great high jungle plains.
Auyan-tepui has been scaled from the south side by the veteran explorer and ornithologist, William H. Phelps, a Caracas businessman, and by his skilled son, Billy Phelps, Jr. Others who have reached the top were members of an expedition from the American Museum of Natural History, New York, and a few hardy individuals.
The aviator Jimmy Angel and his wife, Marie, and Gustavo Heny crash-landed in the boulder-strewn swamp on the mesa top in 1937. None, however, reached Angel Falls from the top or through the Churun canyon almost a mile below.
Thousands of years of erosion have dug out huge crevices and fissures over the flat surface of the giant mesa of Auyan-tepui, making it impossible to travel far. These deep crevices serve as a catchall for heavy rain.
At one point this water bursts out a few feet below the canyon rim into a waterfall of such proportions that it is no wonder Jimmy Angel was astounded when he first saw the falls which now bear his name. That was in 1935.
Not until the autumn of 1948 was the problem of how to get into the canyon solved. I met Alejandro Laime, a Latvian who had been roving around the Gran Sabana for several years. He offered to act as guide to the falls.
Later a talk with bush pilot Sam Fales brought the suggestion that Laime take Indians into the jungle to the north end of the giant mountain and clear one of the little savannas near there as a suitable landing place for a small plane. In that way, we hoped, we could cut out tedious weeks of going by curiara (dugout) on the rapids-strewn rivers and days of hacking through jungle with machetes.
A DC-3 could take us into Uruyen at the south end of Auyan-tepui, and we could then be shuttled, one or two at a time, to the advanced airstrip. There Laime and the Indians could be waiting for us with enough curiaras to take us into the canyon and to the falls.
Laime went back into the jungle, and this spring we sent him word to get the airstrip cut. April 23, 1949, was set as the date of take-off from Caracas.
The last few days were hectic. There were last-minute conferences with the Venezuelan Government's Minister of Communications about the radio and radioman going with us; there were purchases of cases of dehydrated foods and camping equipment. There was the assembling of waterproofing, jungle hammocks, snakebite kits, first-aid kits, compasses, machetes, rope, ammunition and guns, flashlights-a hundred other things…”
7” x 10”, 34 pages, 13 B&W & 17 color photos plus map.
These are pages carefully removed from an actual 1949 magazine.
49K3
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relisted Oct 2 2022