Leon Turnbull Photography

Well I think we have all heard by now about the horrific Eagle Creek Fire in the Columbia River Gorge, Oregon, apparently started by idiot teenagers lighting off firecrackers in the Gorge. Over 100 hikers were stranded overnight, but thankfully all got out the next day with no injuries. Evacuations of nearby town Cascade Locks and other communities, the fire still out of control and spreading west, and even somehow jumped across the Columbia River into Washington state. The last I heard it had reached Multnomah Falls and the historic Lodge was threatened to be destroyed by the fire, and has continued almost to Latourell Falls. The awesome Fire-workers have been hard at work to protect the Lodge and have succeeded in doing so. People everywhere are outraged by this act. Eagle Creek and the Gorge is (or was) incredibly beautiful.  Opinions are rampant on the internet. Some say the Gorge will never recover from this. Lies and fake news are also widespread on the internet and social media. I heard someone say blatantly that Multnomah Falls was “already gone”, already burned, with no facts to support their statement (this was even before the fire reached Multnomah Falls). In this age of social media-ness, people are very quick to lie, and also very quick to believe anything they read without checking facts first. (especially with politics or religion – but this is neither!). Personally, I have been trying to verify facts about this fire, but it is difficult to verify anything. However, Multnomah Falls is “not gone”. The Lodge is not burned. The effects in the Gorge are not nearly as bad as some people would have you believe. The Gorge will be changed surely, but exactly how remains to be seen.

What about the kid that lit the fire? Thanks to one passing hiker that witnessed the act (according to her story in the news – which was upsetting to read), and to her bravery (in my opinion), authorities have apprehended the person responsible. There were multiple teenagers involved, but only one threw the firecracker. However, the investigation is still ongoing and no doubt will be for quite some time. If you follow the Story on the internet, people are calling for his head (literally). Someone said in jest that the names have not been released because half a million people in Portland want to kill him (or them). Everyone and their dog has an opinion on how to deal with these kids. I honestly think the world would be a much better place without the internet (and I am a computer programmer). There is too much hate, too many lies. I am very upset about this fire as well, and I am all for prosecuting him to the full extent of the law, and I do hope justice is served in this case, but within the law, not outside it. Let the authorities do their job, people.

This photo is no lie. It is Punchbowl Falls in the Gorge from a few years ago. What will this waterfall look like next year? Only time will tell the answer.

In other news, I have a big backpacking trip coming up at the end of this month. If all goes perfectly well, I will see 20 brand new waterfalls in 4 days, including (perhaps) a 400 footer and (perhaps) a couple 200 footers. I am sure it will end up being much less than that, but hopefully the trip will indeed go perfectly well for once: No injuries, no problems, no fires.

My brother-in-law (Lynal) had been waiting 20 years for this event, he said. He organized everything, including renting a nice house for us in Sunriver, Oregon, south of Bend. If it wasn’t for him doing all this, I would not have gone up into the totality of Oregon. I hate crowds and it was going to be absolute madness in central Oregon. However, I am so glad I went. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see a total eclipse. If you thought you had a good viewing of it in California you are wrong. Even if you were at 99% I’m sorry but you really missed out. No offense, but the difference between 99 and 100 percent eclipse is like night and day, literally. It is a huge difference. If you have a chance to go in 2024 you really must (however, it will not be on the west coast like this year).

On eclipse day, we left the house at 3:30am much to the chagrin of most of the family. Only Lynal and I were raring to go. Not even Pocah the dog wanted to get up (and especially when she realized there would be 8 of us piling into the van, leaving her nowhere to sit or lie down). But if we left any later, we would not have made it. Our goal was the Painted Hills park in John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. Traffic was not bad until we got close to the park. We arrived at 5:30am and were stopped in a big line up of cars. They would not open the gates until 6am, so Jadon and I left the rest of the family and ran up ahead of all the cars. We got ahead of all of them but there were still lots of people already in the park who had camped out along the road. We walked up past the main overlook and found a prime viewing spot overlooking the hills and next to some pro photographers with big huge camera lenses, from Japan I think. We were in the perfect spot for the total eclipse, and waited for the rest of the family to catch up to us. I watched the road with my big lens looking for a white dog coming up the road (it was too far away to make out anything else), and finally I saw a dog followed by a little girl in pink. That has to be my niece, Mya. And indeed it was. My other niece Hannah thought my perfect spot was not perfect enough, so she climbed up to the top of the hill to get to a better viewing spot. Perhaps she did find an even better spot to see the eclipse. There were a lot of people in the park, but it is such a wide open area that it did not feel crowded at all. The rest of the morning was a waiting game, but it went by quickly and it was a beautiful morning.

The moment finally arrived. It did not disappoint but it was not what I expected. The corona was huge and spectacular during the totality. I did not expect that. It was an eerie twilight light. It got chilly (my mom said it was very cold). We could see a couple stars. I thought it would be darker; so it was definitely different than I thought it would be, but it was very cool and awesome. Nonetheless, it was not the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my life. (Lynal said it was for him and I heard others say the same thing). I think McConnell Peak Falls was more spectacular, and I can think of other waterfalls I have seen that I would say were more spectacular. But I’m the waterfall madman so of course I’d say something like that. You cannot compare such things anyway. Apples and oranges.

The photo here was taken moments before totality. The colors were not as nice as I thought they might be, but the shadows were really interesting. I did not really try to take any photos of the eclipse. I did not have proper filters and I wanted more to just enjoy the experience. The few photos I did take did not turn out very well compared to the multitude of good photos I have seen of the eclipse. I will not be sharing them.

Traffic out was a nightmare. It took two hours to get there and four hours back. Yikes. Oh well. It was well worth the trip to see this once in a lifetime event.

I got my daughter up early yet once again, she is a real trooper. We drove up the mountains in Bend to go on this very easy hike on Fall Creek.

It was extremely cold up on the mountain that early in the morning. I even had to put on my long pants, the first time I have had to do that this summer.

The waterfall is only 24 feet high, but it puts out a heck of a lot of mist. No joke. There was literally no place I could take a photo of this falls easily due to the mist. I tried my best, but I had to shoot from further back than I wanted to. It is definitely a fun little waterfall.

My tripod ball head also broke. I do not understand what happened but it would not stay stable. That makes it difficult to take photos. I tried putting first aid tape around it (it was all I had!), but that did not work anyway. Well what can you do. Argh. Thankfully, I was able to fix it when I got back home (and not using tape!). I thought I might have to fork out $200 for a new one. I am the man. The waterfall madman.

After a very dry February, we have had a wet and much needed start to March in California. A miracle March? The comeback El Nino kid? Well … let’s see … In two weekends, we had 18 inches of rain in the northern Sierra foothills, 8 on the first weekend and 10 on the second weekend. Some areas of course had less, and some may have had more. The overall average amount of rain for March normally is 7 inches, so we are well over that 2 weeks into the month, and have made up for the dry February already. We are above average on rainfall for the year, however the snowpack is still below average, mostly because a lot melted in the warm February that we had. I would really like to see the snow pack go up to well above average before April 1, but I’m not sure it will because the pesky ridge is trying to make another appearance. I only see one more storm in the forecast this month, but we’ll have to see what happens.

Of course I tried to get out in the rain this past weekend, but I really had a tough time of it and was shutdown at every possible turn. Everything and everyone was against me this past weekend, so it seemed. Do you want a recap? 1: a huge landslide blocked a road preventing me from driving past. 2: At a second spot, a tree had fallen in the road preventing me from driving past. 3: A road was gated, so I could not drive down it – I could have and should have walked but decided it was not worth the effort. 4: I was stopped by a cliff that was too dangerous to get past. 5 and 6: The two waterfalls I did find were just very small 10 footers, and I did not even bother with any pictures, and 7: On Sunday afternoon when I went out hiking in the rain after church, I came to a stream crossing that was more like a river. A small stream that normally could be easily jumped across, but instead I found a raging beast that was not crossable. Even wading across it was too dangerous as the flow was too strong, one slip and I would have been down at the bottom of the canyon, and probably into the river and eventually coming out somewhere in Folsom Lake.

Not only all this, but I was almost killed driving home on Saturday. I was stopped on the highway at a red light, waiting for it to turn green. Why are there stop lights on the highway, I never understand that, and there should not be, but nonetheless, there is, and it is very easy to see this one from a mile away at least. The weather conditions were perfectly fine and there is no excuse to not seeing it. I am just setting the stage for you. I was sitting there waiting for the green light, and waiting and waiting for well over 1 minute, and wondering why it was not changing for so long. I happened to look in my rear view mirror, and all of a sudden I see a car coming up behind me doing about 70 miles per hour. He swerves to avoid me, missing me by just mere inches (not exaggerating), goes through the red light (thankfully no other cars were coming), spins out, and ends up in the ditch. There was no damage to him or his car. I was more concerned about damage to me or someone else. If he had hit me at 70 mph what would have happened to me? And how on earth could he not see the red light from a mile away? What was he doing? Texting? Talking on the phone? Drinking? All of the above?

So anyway, as you can see it was definitely not my weekend. Oh yeah, did I mention that it took me almost a full hour to drive through the town of Marysville because of some stupid parade?? Even so, despite all this, clearly God was protecting me in all my situations, especially on the drive home. Next weekend I am entirely sure will be much better. It has to be!

On the plus side, the only plus side, I did see a coyote and a bear on Saturday, the first ones of the year. Considering it was a cold, rainy day in the middle of winter, I sure have to wonder why Mr. Bear was not sleeping!

Here’s a photo from Lower White River Falls, Oregon, from January. Enjoy.

Eight waterfalls in two days, and ten overall on my Christmas holiday (all new waterfalls to me, except for one). Not too bad, me thinks. I was pleased. My belly was full. It was scrumptified. Not all the waterfalls were big ones, but at least half of them were really nice ones, and I think this last one was the most purdy of them all.

The last day was scheduled to be cloudy so we took a big detour through the mountains. That turned out to be a bit hair raising because it was snowing (that part was not scheduled). There was a few inches of new snow on the ground, and the highway had not been plowed. If this was British Columbia, the road would have already been plowed in the night. But this was Oregon. I was not worried about going off the road or anything, but it was just very slow going because it was not plowed. We finally arrived in Prospect in the late morning.

There are four nice waterfalls here, including two utterly spectacular ones. It is a short and pleasant hike through the forest on an icy and snowy path down to Mill Creek and Barr Creek Falls. Barr Creek is the one pictured here and it is a drop dead beautiful drop of 167 ft. (there is also an upper section of this falls that unfortunately cannot be seen very well). Again, I had to keep telling the kids to be careful near the cliff edge. Nekoda managed to clonk her hiking pole down hard onto Jadon’s head while they were standing next to the edge. Oh my gosh. It was an accident of course, but Jadon was in a lot of grief for a few minutes, and I’m just glad he handled it so well and didn’t retaliate. Bye bye Nekoda. That would not have been a happy moment. In truth, the kids get along extremely well together. If it was me and my sister Tania at that age, it really would have been bye bye Tania. I am kidding – I hope, but I did once push my sister off the counter at our house when she was a toddler. But no worries, she still loves me. Ha ha.