Leon Turnbull Photography

Last weekend, my friend Rob and I headed up to Monitor Pass for sunrise and to find some Fall Colors. I got up at 3:45am, had myself some breakfast, coffee, and waited for Rob to arrive at my house. And I waited. And waited. He arrived about 15 minutes later than planned; he said his alarm clock did not go off. He just happened to wake up at about 4, then sped down Folsom Auburn at record speed in order to get to my house. I guess it was lucky he was only 15 minutes late. Anyhow, we got in my car and scooted up the hill. Then we ran into some stupid road construction. The flag man was in a total daze. He looked like a zombie, literally. He must have been standing there all night long. We waited. And waited. About five minutes or more later, the pilot car came and directed us (slowly!) through the construction zone. By the way, there was no construction going on! It was too early in the morning, and they had not even started yet. What the hey? Why did we even have to wait? Meanwhile … the clouds were rolling in, the sun was coming up, and it looked like it was going to be a total killer sunrise. Finally, we got through that nonsense, and continued driving up to Monitor Pass. We arrived right at about sunrise, but we could not really find a good spot to shoot the sunrise from, with so little time. Rob got a good sunrise shot though, but I did not. If only we had arrived 20 minutes earlier. 🙂

Anyway, the Fall Colors on Monitor Pass and elsewhere were just about perfect. Beautiful yellow colors in the Aspen trees, and some nice orange as well. Personally, I have a lot of trouble photographing Aspen trees, and finding good compositions that I really like. In fact, I wasn’t even into photographing Fall Colors this year. Normally, I like to get up to the Tahoe area at least 3 or 4 times. But this year, not.

What I like is water. If I can find some water to photograph, I am a happy camper. This was my vision for this particular morning, finding some nice Aspen trees in color along Monitor Creek. And as we drove back down from the top of Monitor Pass after sunrise, I saw a nice possibility along the creek beside the highway.  I stopped, and scrambled down the steep bank to the creek. I got to the creek, but I got blocked by some very thick brush. I needed to go a bit further upstream to get my shot. The only way to do that would be to wade, but I didn’t feel like taking my boots off. So I picked up a couple big rocks, and threw them in the creek. Then I stepped on them to rock hop further upstream. Hey, it worked. I got the shot that I wanted.

It was a very cold morning. It was probably about 30 degrees or so. I started hiking up the West Hat Creek trail to Paradise Meadows. There was fresh snow on Lassen peak from a recent storm, and that snow was now melting, and the creek was flowing quite strong again. Almost like spring. Except for the cold. Anyway, after a short hike I arrived at the upper waterfall on this creek. Now what? I thought.

It was easy to see that the one and only position to photograph this waterfall was … you guessed it … right in the middle of the creek. Did I say it was a very cold morning? I did not really want to get in that creek, but nonetheless, I reluctantly took off my hiking boots and put on my water shoes. Then I started wading into the creek. Holy crikey! Is that creek cold or what! This was real snow melt from Lassen Peak, and snow melt is always so much colder. If you have stood in a creek flowing from snow melt, you know what I am talking about. I stood in the middle of that creek, and my toes were going numb fast. Wooh! Well, I do have to say though, that it was a very good test for my new tripod. And it held up very well to the coldness. As for my toes, well that is a different story. But I survived without getting hypothermia. haha.

This past weekend, we headed up north and I went over to Lassen Volcanic National Park, again. I was leading a workshop on Saturday, but on Friday I headed up by myself to check out conditions. I was pleasantly surprised.

My plan was to head up West Fork Hat Creek to Paradise Meadow again. I was concerned the creek would not be flowing much, if at all. But thanks to a recent storm, there was fresh snow on Lassen Peak, and the creeks in the park were all flowing again quite nicely from the snow melt. They were also darn cold. That will be a subject of a subsequent post.

In the meantime though, I took this sunrise photo before I headed up the Paradise Meadow trail. It was sunrise as I got to the trailhead, and there was some pretty nice alpenglow light on the peak. I couldn’t resist taking this photo, even though there were not any great colorful clouds around the mountain.

On another note, I seemed to have hurt my leg quite badly. It started hurting the day before I went to Lassen, but it is much worse right now. I have absolutely no idea how I hurt it. But it is putting me out of hiking commission. Bummer. Yet I am still hoping to get out this next weekend to see some Fall colors.

I knew Elowah Falls would not have a lot of water flowing at this time of year. Last year it was very wispy, blowing around in the wind, and almost disappearing in mid-air. But it was also very lovely and graceful just the same.  Definitely a must stop in the Gorge at any time of year. I was certainly surprised to find that there was quite a bit of water flowing in the falls, much more than last year. Supposedly, the Portland area has had a drought this summer, but I sure had not seen it thus far. Although some waterfalls (like Munra Creek) were just barely flowing, others like Elowah were flowing quite strong for this time of year. As I already said, it was definitely quite strange. But who is complaining? Not me. Elowah Falls is and always will be a beauty.

The first place I took John was beautiful Wahclella Falls. Easy hike. Beautiful waterfall. What more could you possibly want?

The best viewpoints for this waterfall require wading across the creek. The first thing I noticed as I did this was that there was more flow in the waterfall this year in October, then when I was here last year in September. The creek was higher, and the crossing was certainly trickier. I warned John to be very careful on the slippery rocks, and he made it all right, though he did drop his polarizer in the water (but was able to retrieve it). I love this particular spot because you get a nice reflection of the waterfall. It is very rare that you see waterfall reflections, but for some reason Wahclella has the stuff.