Leon Turnbull Photography

The first big rains of the season came this weekend. It was enough rain to get the waterfalls rolling again. Unfortunately, it is not looking very good for the long term, as the long range forecast is showing more dry weather for the next couple weeks. Just when I thought things were finally turning around, now we are going back to square one again, perhaps.

Well, you know me. When it rains, it is time for me to get out waterfallin. The problem right now is my badly sprained ankle, which was the only thing preventing me from getting out hiking. The solution: Go to a roadside waterfall of course. I needed something extremely easy to go to, so Devil’s Falls was the ticket for me this weekend.

I arrived at Devil’s Falls first thing Sunday morning. It was not raining, though more was expected later in the morning. The waterfall was flowing ok, not amazingly great, but it was just about exactly as I expected it to be flowing. So that was good. In order to photograph the waterfall, though, I soon realized that I needed to cross the creek for the best composition. Hmm, with my ankle as it was, I was definitely hoping to avoid this. But there was no way around it, so I took off my hiking shoes and donned my water shoes, putting the shoe over my ankle brace, and I carefully, and doubly carefully, crossed the creek, not wanting to make any sort of slippage on the rocks. I made it over without incident, and setup my tripod in the stream and took my photos.

I tried something a little different with this shot. The dilemma with photographing a shot like this is to try to get everything in the frame in perfect focus. Usually, your foreground (the rocks) is either going to be out of focus or your background will be slightly out of focus (the waterfall). Normally I use something called hyperfocal distance to get the best focused image possible, but it is not a perfect method. This time I tried a different approach. I took two shots, one focused on the foreground, the second focused on the background, and then combined the two in Photoshop. This way, everything is in sharp focus. It worked, and I was really quite pleased with the result. This would not work in all situations, but I think I will be doing this more often in the future.

After Devil’s Falls, I debated long and hard about going down to Shirttail Falls. I really really wanted to. But it is not such an easy one to get to. It is a very steep descent down to the creek, and it looked quite slippery with the wet ground. Though it is not hard to do with two working ankles, it is not so easy or smart with only one. In the end I took the smart option, and instead drove into McDonalds in Colfax to get breakfast and a coffee, before going to church to repent of my sin of going waterfallin’ with only one working ankle. Or was it to repent of going to “Devils” Falls on a Sunday? Something like that. I was quite happy, though, when I got back home. Thinking I would be in a lot of pain after going out in the morning, instead the ankle is doing much much better; going to a waterfall seemed to even help it! I might even be ready to go out hiking next weekend.

If you are like me, you are watching the weather forecasts with great anticipation. It has been a long winter so far with essentially zero precipitation. Now finally, it is so nice to see the little raindrops on my long range forecast well into the foreseeable future. The latest report, however, looks like we will not see as much rain/snow as hoped for in northern California. Through Sunday, it looks like only about 3 feet of snow in the Tahoe area (more if you live further north, much less for southern CA). These predictions are changing daily, but definitely I was hoping for (and we need) a lot more than this. The good news, though, is that there are more storms throughout next week.

As for my ankle, it is not broken (confirmed by X-ray), but it also has not gotten any better. I do not think I will be able to hike anytime soon, and with waterfall season starting this is BAD, BAD, BAD. Not only this, but we are planning a trip to Disneyland in a few weeks. Disneyland, of course, involves much walking around. I was also hoping to hit up a few waterfalls down there in SoCal. How I am going to manage all this will be a mystery. Maybe my wife can scoot me around in a wheelchair all day (to the waterfalls also!).

I had a request to give a review on my SPOT Connect device. When I first got the device I gave some initial thoughts on it, but now that I have used it for awhile, I can give some more details. I got the SPOT Connect to replace my old SPOT 1 device. SPOT 1 was the company’s first foray into the Emergency beacon world, and although the device worked, it did have its problems. I expected these problems to be resolved with SPOT Connect, but not really. The Connect uses a Bluetooth connection to your iPhone, and a iPhone App controls the device. I did not have any troubles syncing the device with the iPhone via Bluetooth, and the App works perfectly fine. The very first time I attempted to sync the device, it seemed to require a reboot or two of the phone, but since then it works perfect. Sometimes the App will not connect immediately, but all you need to do is close and re-open the App and then it will connect. No issues with that.

The nice thing about SPOT Connect is you can send specific typed messages to your contacts when you are out on the trail (with the old SPOT 1 you can just send a “OK” message). You can either type a message into the App (41 characters), or you can setup pre-defined messages beforehand (of more than 41 characters). It costs extra money to type a message out in the field, so I always try to pre-define them before I go out in the field. It would be nice if you could do this with the app, but you have to do it on your PC at home instead, which is not as convenient. I have set up generic messages for everything I can think of to tell my wife when I will be out on the trails (such as: “OK. I have arrived at waterfall!”). The type-a-message idea I would use for an emergency type situation or when I need to tell my wife something very specific. You can also post the messages to Facebook or Twitter, and you may have seen me do this on my Facebook site. This is a very nice feature.

I think the only real bad thing with the device is that the messages do not always get sent. The SPOT 1 had the same issue but the difference is that the Connect indicates that the message was sent successfully even though it was not (and there is no way to know if it really was sent or not). This is really bad if you are trying to send an important or emergency message. However, this only happens about 10-15 percent of the time so if you send many messages (or the same one multiple times) then most of them will get through.

The other thing about the device is that it will chew up your iPhone battery quickly if you leave it connected. This is obviously a big issue if you are on an extended hike but not so much if you are on a shorter day hike. I always disconnect after sending a message then re-connect when I want to send a second one later. Another thing I have found is that my phone does not work at all when it is extremely cold. It will be important to keep your phone warm if you are hiking in extreme conditions. You can always send an emergency signal directly from the device (without the phone app) but it is nice to be able to send regular OK messages as well.

All in all, I definitely do recommend the device. It is a great peace of mind for myself (hiking alone), and also for my wife (worrying about me, back at home).

It is coming. Maybe. I hope. Perhaps. I’m talking about snow of course. We are still waiting for winter to start here in northern California. The last report I heard is that it is on its way. Mid January things will start to look up. I hope.

In the meantime, I ventured out to Foresthill looking for a new waterfall on Big Mosquito Creek. With an ominous name like this, I don’t think I would want to come here in the summer. I did not think it would be flowing greatly, but it was more of a scouting trip to return to in the spring (before mosquito season, hopefully). I found the waterfall pretty easily, the viewpoint is just off the main road. Getting down to it is another matter entirely. I did not try this time due to sore ankle and lack of water flow, but I think it is possible, and when I return back in the spring I will definitely give it a go. Another reason I must return is that I am not very happy with this photo. I did not get it in good focus for some reason. Was my I.S. switched on unawares? I did not think so. Ugh. Well, if we do get some snow, then this creek should have great flow in the spring, and the waterfall will be rockin.

Waterfalls, actually. Yes, there is almost certainly a second, much larger waterfall on this same creek downstream. Unfortunately, I think it might not be possible to get down to it. It is about 2 or 3 miles downstream from the upper falls, and after taking a gander at this upper falls, I ventured downstream seeing how close I could get to it. With my ankle still being sore, I did not really want to go too far. Indeed, I went further than I should have, but the going was actually pretty easy and the forest was pretty open, as I think there was a fire that went through here many many years ago. But further down it starts to get very cliffy and that is where I turned around, still a good two miles from the waterfall. From where I turned around, it would have still been possible to continue. But for how long, I do not know. On the way back up, I came to a strange open, flat area. It seemed there was a lot of old bear poop scattered throughout the area, and bear trails going off in different directions. Was this where all the bears in the area hung out? Or slept? Then I heard a strange sound, like a horse. (but obviously, it was not a horse). I do not know what it was, if anything. Maybe a bird. But maybe it was a bear turning over in its sleep. I did not see anything. But I sure did not want to wake up a sleeping bear, so I scooted back up the hill as fast as my sore ankle could take me.

I went hiking after work last night down to Folsom Lake. Not for the sunset. I am trying to lose some more weight, and I figure I need to do more than just one hike per week (on Saturday). It is very difficult to do any sort of exercise after work during the week, since I get home so late. But I am going to try to start doing something at least a few days a week. Going down to Folsom Lake at the old Salmon Falls bridge is an easy but good little hike.

I did take my camera with me (and I plan to keep doing this now, of course!). The sunset initially looked like it would be a wash, nothing at all. There were a lot of thick clouds in the sky. I almost left my tripod in the car. I arrived down at the bridge, which is usually under water, but with the lake being low right now, it is showing. It was sunset time. I did not take my camera out of the bag. I waited. The sky started getting redder. Camera is still in bag. And redder. Still watching. And redder. Now I’m getting intrigued. And redder. Out pops the camera. It was well after sunset by this time, but I quickly setup and took a couple shots. I was definitely not expecting such a sunset, but it was pretty darn sweet. Thanks, Lord.

The weather is all twisted. Winter is supposedly well under way but definitely not for us here in northern CA. After a decent November we had nuthin in December, one of the driest Decembers ever. Initial reports indicated the wet weather would begin in January but now I’m still not seeing too much of anything in the long range forecasts, except for an occasional shower or two. We are probably looking at more dry weather through mid January. Of course we need the rain and snow for more than just the waterfalls. It is our lifeblood in California.

Well, not to be outdone by the dry weather I still wanted to go waterfallin on Christmas Eve on the way up north to visit family. The original plan was to hit Feather Falls, but I just happened to see on dreamflows that PG&E was releasing huge amounts of water in the Pit River and that meant that Pit River Falls would be flowing. Indeed it should be utterly spectacular. Even though it is a four hour drive from my house it would be well worth it and I was going north for Christmas anyway. So up I got at 2:30am and started driving north. I arrived at the Pit River overlook at 7am. Pit River Falls was NOT utterly spectacular. What the hey? This was all twisted, it made no sense. At 5am the gage above Pit 1 Powerhouse was at above 20,000 cubic ft per second. That is mega water flow! But now at 7am it looked to be only at 500 or 600 cfs. What happened? Did they only bring the water level up for a short few minutes? Or was it some sort of error in the gage reading? I do not know. Neither one makes much sense. Well even at 500 cfs the river still has good flow, albeit not spectacular, and I had never been down to the bottom before (not to mention the very long drive out there), so I decided to continue the plan of hiking down to the falls.

If there was an actual well defined trail to the bottom then it would have been easy. There is no trail. There is a path that people have gone down before, but it is very overgrown, there are a lot of branches and twigs you need to walk over, the ground is very rocky and crumbly, and the slope is steep. About 2/3 of the way down I slipped on that crumbly slope and fell, severely twisting my ankle. I heard a pop sound as I fell. Oh oh. It was definitely not broken but it was not good. What should I do? I sat down and recovered myself for five minutes then I decided it was not (and would not be) a show stopper. I continued down to the falls, slowly and gingerly. It was not that bad but I was limping and not putting much weight on the ankle. Coming back up the mountain afterwards was harder but I still made it without too much difficulty. The worst part was the next day, when I was in quite a lot more pain and hobbling around the house worse than my mother in law’s 16 year old cat.

But I made it down successfully to Pit River Falls. The waterfall was nice and with less flow it was easy to climb around on the rocks beside the falls. There were a lot of photo opportunities and I took plenty of photos. Without knowing what the heck was going on with the gage reading I was a bit worried about this, wondering how safe it was down there, and what would happen if they suddenly released a truckload of water over the falls. I watched the river carefully always making sure I had a quick escape route. All in all, it was an enjoyable morning despite the pain, and if you are wondering how my ankle is now, it recovered quite well enough to get back out on the trails on Tuesday.