Leon Turnbull Photography

My wife’s birthday and my birthday are only one day apart. Perfectly convenient, is how I look at it. My wife hates it. Go figure. Mostly it is because I would rather celebrate the birthdays together, go out for dinner just once, have just one cake, etc. Convenience, you know. Well, I have learned by now that won’t work with her. Two dinners, two cakes, two celebrations.

This year my birthday fell on a Saturday. Yeah! That means I had the day all to myself and could go hiking anywhere I liked. Perfect. I suppose I could have picked a better location but I wanted to try to find something new, and that usually means the chances of actually finding something interesting are quite low, but mainly I just wanted to get out on a nice long hike. Actually I think I could have found something if it weren’t for the mud. A giant mud hole in the road prevented me from being able to drive to the trailhead. I was forced to turn around or else sink into oblivion. It is very strange too because we had so little rain this month. Where did all this mud come from? Some sort of wormhole to another dimension? Well not to be outdone just yet, I studied my maps and found a potential alternate route to my desired creek so I decided to try it. The new route found me hiking along logging roads in the direction of the creek I was trying to get to but in the end I was not able to get down to it due to too much brush and too much steepness. Nonetheless I did have a good long hike so I was not unhappy and it ended with a family dinner at Chicago Fire, the best pizza in California. Mmmmmm I would eat there every week if Tara would let me.

Despite the mud shenanigans on Saturday I would not be shut out for waterfalls this weekend. On Sunday we were planning to go to Phantom Falls on my wife’s birthday. She had never been there and has always said she really wanted to go to it so it was not hard to talk her into it on her birthday. We had the kids as well and so it was a great family outing together amongst the killer cows (we all survived) and the elusive salamander (which my wife unsuccessfully tried to chase over a waterfall). I was not expecting too much in flow on Table Mtn but I did think Phantom Falls would be a little better than it was. We sure do need a lot more rain here. Anyway Tara was really happy to finally get out to see this amazing waterfall and the kids did great on the four mile hike. It was a great morning on Table Mountain.

My wife and I headed over to the coast for the weekend, sans kids, to celebrate our birthdays this month. Both of our happy days are at the end of January (well as happy as you can be at my age). My wife loves the ocean and beach, and I was hoping to see some waterfalls of course. The bad news though is that it has not rained in January. Why is it that whenever I plan a big waterfall vacation to the CA coast, I always pick dry times of the year! It happened last year and the year before as well. It was going to be interesting to see if the falls were all completely dry or not, I did not have my hopes too high.

We arrived very early at this waterfall, called Andrew Molera Falls after the state park that it is in. It is very easy to get to but I had never been here before so thus I was anxious to remedy this silly faux pas.

Andrew Molera Falls is an ugly waterfall. Seriously. There are fallen logs all over the place at this waterfall. I can think of other waterfalls where fallen logs across the falls actually enhance the waterfall’s beauty and character (Russian Gulch Falls, Lion Slide Falls). But the fallen logs across Andrew Molera Falls do no such thing. Ah well, what can you do? Well, you can look for alternative viewpoints. And that is what I did. My wife stayed at the overlook while I scally wagged down the hill to the creek, crossed it, then made my way up and around fallen logs, and down to the base of the falls. Whew. Once down I realized I would have to get my feet wet, getting into the creek and climbing up a mini cascade where I could get the view point I wanted. My wife, watching me from afar, said I looked like a hobbit with bare feet and rolled up pants, scampering in the creek. It was fun though and pretty cool standing under the fallen logs and looking up at the 35 ft. high waterfall. Did I make this ugly waterfall look pretty? You be the judge.

As for the flow … well it was not dry! It was actually flowing better than I expected and it was the same thing at our next stop (Pfeiffer Falls). So this gave me some hope for the rest of the weekend.

The one bad thing that happened here though? Tara somehow picked up a tick while sitting here waiting for me. She did not notice the thing biting her until the next day and it was bad by then. I don’t understand how she could not notice a tick biting her that long but this was the only possible place she could have picked it up. When we got home she went to see the doctor and is on antibiotics to be on the safe side and we pray this will keep her from getting any nasty disease. Other than this (oh and the hotel reservation mess up – sigh) we had a great time at the coast.

On my way back from Moyie Falls, I called my wife back at the ranch to see if she or anyone else wanted to go with me quickly to Marysville Falls. My sister lives only a few minutes away from this 45 ft. high cascade in the middle of the town of Marysville. It is a short and easy walk to get to it. But we had to move very quickly. I could tell the sun was on the verge of coming out from hiding. The race was on. Could I get there in time? Doo doo doo doo.

Tara was the only one that wanted to come, so we drove into town, parked, and started down the trail. Actually, I ran ahead. I had only minutes, perhaps just seconds to take my photo of the waterfall.

At the overlook, the snow was deep, and I struggled to get my tripod set up in a stable position. Ugh! That sun is coming! I could not get it set. My wife arrived and offered to help, by holding the tripod in position while I took my photos. It seemed to work, but when I got home to examine my photos, I see that did not work as well as I thought. There was still movement from the tripod, and most of my photos did not turn out. I do thank her for trying to help, however. I took the best of the photos, and managed to work it enough to get it processed. It is okay, but I think it could be better.

The interesting thing about this waterfall is all the snow and ice around it. It is quite amazing. On the way back up the trail, we passed quite a few people coming down to see the falls. Now that the sun was out, I guess everyone thought it would be good to come down and see it (and photograph it in crappy lighting conditions I suppose). Anyway, it was a fun outing.

We returned to the house and after lunch, went to the arena to watch my niece Hannah in her figure skating practice. I keep telling her I want to see her do a triple lutz. She keeps laughing at me (she is ten). After this we went back home where my daughter got to ride one of the horses. My sister has two horses on their ranch. One of them is a bit crazy. My brother in law said, she may be pretty but her heart is black (like the color of her fur/hair – do horses have hair or fur?) We did not ride that one. The other horse is older but much nicer, and Nekoda got to ride her around for a bit. She was extremely happy afterwards. Flying on air. Later that night, however, she realized she really could not fly when she took a nasty fall while trying out their treadmill (unbeknownst to any of the adults in the house). Poor little girl, she looked like she had been through the washing machine (literally). Fortunately it was nothing more serious than scrapes and bruises, and other than this we had a great time visiting our family in Canada this Christmas season.

If I am going to get up super early in the morning to go hiking, I need to be motivated. Some weekends I feel more like sleeping in than getting up to go hiking. Funny that. Sometimes, it does not take much to motivate me, other times it takes a sledgehammer. This weekend was one of those sledgehammer type weekends. I did not feel much like driving a long way from home to go on a big hike, so I was initially thinking I would just go somewhere close to home, but I wasn’t really much into that either when I thought about my options for close to home hikes. As I pondered my dilemna, I thought about Deadwood Creek. I had heard of a big waterfall on this creek a couple years ago, and have been wanting to try to get to it for a long time, especially since a friend recently sent me some photos of the waterfall (actually, photos of him kayaking off the waterfall – he is one of my crazier acquaintances). It seemed to be a good time to try it. Even though it was a long drive from home, I was now motivated. The plan was set. This was on Tuesday. Now I just had to wait for the weekend to arrive!

Saturday arrived, and I was still motivated. Excited even. I got up early and started the long drive out to the trailhead. Did I say it was a long drive? Deadwood Creek is way out in the land of nowhere, many miles past Clipper Mills (if you know where that is, and you probably do not). It is about an hour drive past Marysville, well you probably have heard of that town at least. It was a freezing cold day, below 20 degrees, and as I drove past Clipper Mills, I came upon snow. Oops, I did not anticipate this. The last few miles requires driving on a dirt forestry road. With snow on the ground, would I even be able to reach the trailhead? The answer was a big fat NO. The road had obviously been driven on, however, there was a big snow patch stopping me from proceeding. If I had more clearance on my SUV I could have made it, but I did not want to risk getting stuck way out here, that would be very uncool. So … what do I do? Go home? After driving all the way out here to nowhere land, and not even able to start any hike at all? Nope. Well, I suppose I could just hike along the dirt road to the trailhead. It would be about 3 miles. So instead of a difficult 3 mile hike, I would have a difficult 9 mile hike. I had the time, and most importantly, I still had the motivation. Time to hike.

With the late start and the extra long hike, I would be getting to the waterfall much later than expected (if at all), but from my prior calculations I knew that the sun would not be hitting the waterfall until at least noon. I had loads of time. If it were otherwise, I would not even have started the hike. Photography is perhaps THE most critical part of my waterfallin’ exploits. I absolutely hate getting to a waterfall and not being able to take a good photograph of it. Sometimes it is just not possible to get to waterfalls in good lighting conditions, but I do a lot of preparation beforehand to make sure the odds are in my favor. For this one, I should certainly have lots of time but already it seemed the sun was high in the sky and shining down into the canyons. Did I make an error in my calculations?

The trail down to Deadwood Creek and the North Yuba River is a dirt road, descending a whopping 1200 ft. in 1.5 miles. It was going to be a killer hike back out of the canyon. At the top of the trail I saw bear prints in the snow. Aren’t these dudes supposed to be sleeping right now? Hmmm. The hike down was fairly quick, and I saw no bears or other wildlife, except for some horrid squirrels and the thunderous quail. At the bottom of the canyon there is a powerhouse; they suck the lifeblood out of Deadwood Creek above the waterfall and siphon it down into the powerhouse along the river. Argh. Why do they need a powerhouse here? It irks me to no end. Frankly, I was not even sure there would be any flow at all in the creek. Not because of the powerhouse, but because it was so darn cold. I really thought the creek would be completely frozen. That would be just splendid. Drive all the way out here, hike all the way down to the creek, and then find no waterfall at all.

When I finally got to the bottom, I could see (happily) that I was wrong about the flow in the creek. It was flowing, and at a pretty darn good clip to boot. The last section down to the falls is steep so I used my rope to help me scale down the treacherous slope. I felt like a canyoneer. Once at the bottom, I needed to cross the creek and make my way up to the falls on the other side. Deadwood Creek Falls drops 43 ft. into a large and deep pool, and I was able to get down right in front of the falls. It was icy and cold and magnificent. And the water in the pool was just wow, such an incredibly intense blue green color. I was so happy how my photograph turned out, and how my camera portrayed this amazing scene before me. And the hike back out of the canyon? Much easier than I anticipated. I had heard horror stories about the hike up, a hike that would suck the lifeblood out of you worse than the powerhouse. Not so. It was not easy by any means, but the grade on the trail was mostly very good, with plenty of switchbacks. I have done far worse hikes than this one. It was surely a beautiful cold winter day in the North Yuba River canyon.

After spending Christmas at my folks’ place in Rossland BC, we drove over to the East Kootenays, to Cranbrook to visit my sister and family. They have two girls about the same age as our two kids, and it is always very special for the cousins to see each other. Their girl Mya said we are her favourite of all her many cousins. Take that Doerksen family! (kidding) Most of the time, we did not even see the four of them as they were all off somewhere playing together. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, I suppose.

Anyway on Friday after Christmas, I got up early to do a little hike. Unfortunately my dumb weather app got me up an hour too early. There is a one hour time difference between Rossland and Cranbrook, thus I thought it very odd that there would only be a five minute difference in sunrise time. But then again it didn’t seem right that sunrise would be after 8:30AM in Cranbrook either. Yeah right. Well at least there was a Tim Hortons in town where I could sit and wait until after 8:30 (and have a coffee and donut too of course).

My goal was Moyie Falls just south of Cranbrook. When we were last here in Autumn, I vaguely remember trying to get to this waterfall with Tara, but for some reason we never got there. I have no idea why. My memory is fleeting in old age. All I remember is that we drove up the dirt road from Lumberton, but I know we never even got close to the falls. Maybe we made a wrong turn somewhere? The thing of it is, even if we did not make a wrong turn, we probably could not have gotten to the waterfall anyway.

It is interesting that this road is plowed in the winter. Indeed, I found that many such logging roads in BC were plowed. It is odd. If this was California, there is no way in a cat’s meow the road would be plowed, though I wish it were different in California. It would open up some amazing winter recreational opportunities. Sigh.

Well I found the turnoff that I somehow missed the last time I was here, and started walking down the road to the Moyie River. I had my snowshoes on just in case I needed them, but I did not. The trail was well packed and well trodden. It seems to be a popular hike in the winter, but there was no one here this day (too close to sunrise? It is sure tough getting up at 8:30 eh). It is an easy trek down to the river, and from there the trail continues up stream to the falls. You cannot see or hear the waterfall. In fact, the river is so flat and so peaceful and meandering down here, you think there is no way there could be a waterfall. I was not really sure what to expect either, I thought there might be a 20 foot waterfall, but more likely it would be just 10 feet or even less. But as I rounded a corner, I could see it, and it was a dandy. Not just a 10 footer, but a 46 ft high beauty as the river drops over a hidden cliff in a tight gorge.

I could also see something else. This waterfall is not possible to get to without crossing the river. In the spring, I think it would be impossible. In the cold freezing winter though, it is different. Ice bridges allow passage across the river. I was a bit hesitant, but the path I was following was secure and strong. That extra spaghetti I ate at the Colander Restaurant was not enough to break this ice bridge. The path led over the river, then up the other side to the falls. A big snowy rock right in front of the waterfall I climbed up on top of, to enjoy the view and take my photographs. Notice also the old mine shaft beside the waterfall. It is a very fascinating and beautiful place.