Leon Turnbull Photography

Taking a break from Canyon Creek, and back to something a bit different from American Canyon Creek. This is below American Canyon Creek Falls, where the trail drops fairly steeply on its way down to the Middle Fork American River. There are many mini-waterfalls along this section, and it is possible to get down to some of them. This is one of those pretty little cascades. There are many photo possibilities along this creek, and I just couldn’t resist. Very gorgeous indeed.

It is my daughter’s birthday today. She is 4 years old. They grow up so fast, don’t they. It seems like only yesterday she was just a little baby. But she will always be my little baby, I think. 😉 We are going out for lunch today. Not Chuck E Cheese (which we did last week for Jadon’s birthday – man, their pizza is awful). Today it is John’s Incredible Pizza; supposedly they have better pizza but they are much more expensive. We’ll see.

Rob was giddy when we arrived at the Big Waterfall. He was running around like a chicken with his head cut off (I’m not kidding), looking for places to photograph the falls, of which there are plenty. I thought for sure he had been down here before, but apparently he had only been to the first waterfall. He was excited. So was I. The Big Waterfall is 134 ft. high, and it was flowing beautifully this day, much nicer than the month before. It is off the beaten trail too. You gotta know where it is in order to find it, which makes it all the more rewarding. Still though, I wanna come back here when the flow is about three times as much or more again. Then it’ll be really cooking. The last time that happened was 3 years ago. It could happen this year. I’m hoping so anyway.

This past weekend, my friend Rob and I headed on back to Canyon Creek Falls in Gold Run, a spectacular set of waterfalls that I had just visited last month. I was a bit disappointed then of the low flow in the creek, which is normally much more exciting. But after two solid weeks of rain, I knew the waterfalls would be ripping and roaring now, and I was anxious to get back to see them. So was Rob.

There were a couple things I wanted to try this time around. Firstly, I wanted to try to get to the bottom of the first waterfall, a gorgeous 42 footer that is best seen above from the trail, but entices you to want to get down to see it up close. It has been beckoning me for many years now. The second thing I wanted to do was go all the way down to the river (1700 ft. below our starting point). More waterfalls abound on the creek lower down, and I hadn’t been down to see them for quite a few years. It is probably my favourite trail in this area, but it is certainly no cake walk.

When we arrived in Gold Run at first light, we found quite a bit of snow on the ground. This was unusual. Gold Run doesn’t normally get snow. It also would make the hike a bit interesting. It is hard enough finding the route through the forest to begin with, but with snow on the ground, it would be almost impossible. But thank the Lord for the GPS. With this, I was able to get us through the forest with only one or two wrong turns. It would be easy getting back, we would just need to follow our tracks through the snow back to the car. But the snow was slushy. Our feet were totally soaked before we even made it down to the first waterfall.

As we arrived at the first waterfall, we could see that the creek was still not flowing as high as we had anticipated or hoped. But on the other hand, it was flowing much much better than when I was here a month ago. When the creek is high, an offshoot from the creek splits off and shoots off a wall in a second gorge beside the main drop, forming a second waterfall. The offshoot was running today. It is a really cool sight to see. But I wasn’t too sure about being able to get to the bottom. After talking to Rob on the phone the previous day, he had told me that he had tried to get down to the bottom on a previous occasion and he found it too steep to go down. I was bummed. I knew that if it was too steep for mountain goat Rob, it would be much too steep for me. But nonetheless, we tried to go down. And we made it. It was steep and tricky, but not too bad going down. Going back up though, we found was much more difficult. But it was indeed glorious down at the base of the falls.

After reveling in the glory of the first waterfall, we continued on down to the Big Waterfall. Then on down to the river and more waterfalls. We saw 6 waterfalls all together on Canyon Creek. I will be posting many more photos of our adventure in the coming days, so stay tuned.

On the way back up, we met a man and woman couple coming down the trail. This is unusual because I rarely see anyone else on this trail ever. But it was even more strange when the first thing she said as we approached her was “You’re Leon Turnbull”. Wow, I didn’t know I was so famous. It turned out to be one of my Flickr contacts. She must have recognized me from my hat (in truth, my hat is probably more famous than I am – thanks, Rob). It was even more strange because it turned out that Rob used to go the same church as them. It is such a small world sometimes.

On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to take the afternoon off work to go hiking. That might sound like a very good thing, but it is not really. The only reason I could do this is because I was scheduled to work this weekend, Friday night, and likely Saturday too. That is just the life of an I.T. person. Every once in awhile, you have to work off hours. It was nice though, that my boss let me off Wednesday afternoon since I’d be working on the weekend. But as it turned out, our project implementation got delayed by a couple weeks. I found this out on Thursday. So I was able to go hiking on Saturday also.

And now is the time to get out and see the waterfalls. We had about 2 straight weeks of rain at the beginning of February, very much needed here in California. It was enough to get us back to average snow levels for the year after a very dry January. All this rain means the waterfalls are flowing wonderfully right now.

I only had the afternoon, so I couldn’t go anywhere too far away. I wanted to go back to American Canyon Creek in Auburn, and see how that waterfall looked when the creek is flowing high. So that is what I did. The trail down to the falls is very pleasant, and not too difficult considering you lose about 1000 ft. in elevation. There are two creeks to cross before you get to the falls. Normally simple rock hops, they were a bit tricky with so much water flow. I got across both of them and only got my boots slightly wet. Once down at the falls, I saw that the light was not very good, as it was still early in the afternoon. I had some time, so I decided to continue on down to the river, and come back to photograph the falls on my way back up. That involved another creek crossing. This time there would be no rock hopping, I’d have to wade. But wait, there was a log going across the creek. Maybe I could walk across the creek on the log. It really freaks me out trying to cross raging creeks on (slippery) logs, with the creek flowing swiftly beneath my feet. But I really didn’t want to take my boots off, so I tried it, and made it without falling in the drink. As I continued on down the trail, I found some pretty little cascades to stop and photograph along the creek. The creek drops pretty steeply here, and there are actually more waterfalls along here, including a couple of significant drops. I managed to find a way down to one of them. Pictures of it will be forthcoming. After photographing these cascades, it was getting late, so I didn’t end up going all the way to the river, but instead went back up the trail, across the log and up to American Canyon Creek Falls.

In order to see this waterfall, you have to get across the creek. With the creek flowing high, there was no way to rock hop across it. Fortunately, I anticipated this beforehand, and I brought my water shoes with me. I put them on, and was able to carefully wade across the raging creek.

American Canyon Creek Falls is only 15 ft. high, but is perhaps the coolest little waterfall in the greater Sacramento area. It is nestled back in a very narrow rock gorge, dropping into a pretty little pool. You have to kinda tilt your head at a weird angle to see it back in the gorge, but it is so very gorgeous. However, I kinda thought that with the high creek flow, it would be much more spectacular than it was. In fact, I think this waterfall is actually better when the creek is low. The reason I think is that the pool is much prettier in lower flows, instead of when it is just a torrent of rushing water. But nonetheless, it was still pretty darn cool. I definitely had a fabulous afternoon hiking.

This is the lower falls on Dutch Creek, 24 ft. high. This is the first waterfall you come to hiking along the creek, before you come into view of the two beauties above it. It is not a bad little waterfall either, and it is possible to get right down to the creek here. But there was quite a lot of spray, making it difficult to photograph the waterfall, and not many vantage points except directly in front of the falls. As you can see, there was also a lot of foam in the water at the bottom of the falls, which I tried to make use of in the foreground of the photo.