Leon Turnbull Photography

This weekend took me back to Table Mountain in Oroville. With two inches of rain this week, and four+ inches last week, it was time to think all these waterfalls on Table Mountain would be flowing again. Well … they were all flowing, but not nearly as well as I expected them to be.

My initial plan was to go to Ranch, Crevice, and Lower Beatson. However, I saw new “no trespassing” signs at the trailhead. What? Isn’t North Table Mountain supposed to be public accessible land? Why are there signs here now? I wasn’t sure what to do. If I parked here, it would be obvious I was “trespassing”. Probably not a good thing. I decided to go up to the main parking area, which I wanted to do anyway. My second hike was going to be to go to Little Hollow Falls, which I had not been to before. It was an easy hike to that little waterfall, and I will post that photo soon. After that I decided to continue down towards Beatson. THE LONG WAY.

I met some cows along the way. The cows on Table Mountain are killer cows. I may have said that before. I’m not kidding. They have been known to attack people. Well … I did hear of one instance before where a cow charged at someone. That is the truth, at least. The cows today were stalking me big time and were highly intolerable. They would not mooooove out of my way as I came up to them. Normally, they will move away as I approach, but not today. There was a large group of about 20 and they just stood there, blocking my way, and determined to not let me pass. I really did not want to walk right through the midst of them, so I decided to drop off the top of the hill and go down to Beatson Creek. I wanted to do this anyway, just not at this exact spot. It would have been perfectly fine, except that the entire hill was covered with poison oak. There was no avoiding the stuff. What to do, what to do. Do I go back and do battle with the cows? Or continue on and do battle with the oak? I chose the oak, and I am entirely uncertain that was the right choice. Well, I got to the bottom and now had to cross Beatson Creek which was wide and full. It was raining and I did not want to take off my boots and wade across. Fortunately, I found a log crossing the creek and managed to keep my feet and the rest of my body dry. In other words, I did not take a header of the very slippery and wet log, knock myself unconscious on a rock and drown (in case you were wondering).

I continued up the other side and headed in the direction of Lower Beatson Hollow Falls. Again, I came across another large group of cows that would NOT let me pass around them. They kept running along parallel to me, blocking me from going around. I swear one of them was about to charge me. I ended up going all the way to Crevice Falls before I could cut back to Lower Beatson. Just a bit of extra hiking there. Darn cows. What is up with them today? When I was last at Lower Beatson Hollow Falls, I was not happy with my photos or the view I found. The waterfall is quite hidden and it cannot be seen very well from the top of the cliff. And since it is on the top of a cliff, getting down is quite out of the question. Well, I really wanted to return here and try to get down to the bottom of it. I anticipated that it would be a huge effort that involved rappelling down the cliff and then wading up the creek through heavy brush and poison oak. Not something I looked forward to, but as I said I just was not happy with my photos from the first time. As it turned out, it was actually quite easy to get down to the bottom, and once down, I found a path leading right up to the waterfall. Was it a cow path? No, I am pretty sure it was a human path. I have never heard of anyone being down here at the base of this falls before, but it was obvious that people had been. This was especially clear as I got up to the waterfall. There is one large rock you have to climb up on, which would have been quite challenging, but there was a ladder! Not just any ladder, it was a good solid iron ladder. Quite fascinating. The waterfall is quite fascinating as well, dropping 38 ft. off the cliff into this very cool little grotto, with huge basalt chunks scattered about that had broken off the cliffs, and a second little waterfall beside it as well. Very cool. From here, I hiked back up and made the long trek back to my car at the main trailhead. All in all, about 10 miles of hiking for these two little waterfalls. Whew!