STINGER
My daughter and I were driving up to Canada for an unfortunately unscheduled trip to see my family because my dad just passed away. It was not an unexpected thing but my mom really appreciated the visit. Along the way we stopped at a couple waterfalls of course.
I heard horror stories about this hike to Trilbey Falls. I really wanted to try it, but I just wasn’t sure about bringing my 11-year-old daughter on this hike. I heard that it was crazy steep and crazy difficult. Almost certainly, I would not be able to get down to it. Well, it was worth a try. We could always turn back if it got too cliffy or impossible. I mean, how bad could it really be anyway? Famous last words, right?
There was supposed to be a trail. I could not find it. That meant we had to go straight down through the forest and through the brush. Nekoda said she was OK with that. Except that she wasn’t. And it was all my fault. As we descended, with me going first, I stepped right over a hornet nest (or wasp nest, or bee hive, or whatever). Whatever they were, they woke up from their afternoon nap. When she stepped over, she got stung on the leg. Ouch! Fortunately, she only got one sting. It could have been so much nastier than one sting. We quickly got further away from the nest so I could treat her leg with my first aid kit.
To her great credit, she did not want to go back up, but she wanted to keep going down to the falls. She is a trooper. So down we went.
I got the location of this waterfall from a certain site, but the location was not correct, and with no trail to follow, we ended up right at the bottom of the creek and found no waterfall there at all. Nonetheless, it was a very bizarre place, like something out of Lord of the Rings, I have not seen anything like it before. Huge mossy boulders were scattered all over the place, very old fallen trees, with big holes that you definitely did not want to walk over, quite dangerous, and it was very steep, and the creek was flowing in and out between the boulders. Thinking the falls must be behind the boulders, I carefully climbed over to the creek, but saw no waterfall. So back up the hill we went. I knew there must be a waterfall here somewhere and it must be hidden further upstream.
Hidden it was. You cannot even see it when you are right beside it but I did glimpse it from further down so I knew it was there. Somewhere. Nekoda thought I was high. There is no waterfall here she said. The only way to see it for reals is to get down to the bottom, but it was very cliffy. How would we get down?
Well, we did find a way and it really wasn’t too difficult. My daughter could even do it. I did use the rope to help with safety, but I probably didn’t really need it. Nekoda refused to use the rope. I think I may have raised a mountain goat. It was a very fun descent down to creek level, and that is where we finally saw the waterfall dropping 40 feet within a tight gorge in between two cliff edges. What a magnificent place, and what a magnificent waterfall. Nekoda said it was certainly the best waterfall we saw on our trip, despite the bee sting.
We did find the trail proper on the way back up, and it was very easy following it. No hornet nest, no steep cliffs. Nonetheless, I still could not see where the trail ended up back on the road, and the last part was still a bush whack. No wonder I did not see the trail on the way down. Oh well. We had much fun on this hike.