Leon Turnbull Photography

Snow shoeing in the middle of May? Are you kidding me? No I am not! Such was my adventure this week, and it was a very fun one!

My goal: To find new waterfalls up on Ice House Rd. in the area of Loon Lake. I only ended up finding two new (small) waterfalls, though I was hoping for a lot more.

I have had loads of trouble getting to sleep at night lately. I have no idea why. But especially when I am planning to wake up very early the next morning to hike, I just haven’t been able to sleep well the night before. Usually when this happens, I turn off the alarm and skip my hike. This time, however, I was determined to get up hiking anyway. I had to. The forecast was for overcast skies on this morning, which is a rarity for California in May. I had a cool plan to attempt to get to multiple waterfalls, and I needed overcast skies in order to have decent light for photography at all of them. It was a great plan, though it did not work out that way. So I got up at 3:30AM with less than an hour of sleep and headed off with my very full coffee cup up Ice House Rd. in the wee hours of the morning.

In the winter, SMUD plows Ice House Rd. all the way to Loon Lake. That is sweet, because otherwise this road would still be snowed in. At about 6000 ft. elevation, there was still a lot of snow on the ground. I was surprised to see so much snow. Loon Lake in fact, was still partially frozen. It looked very beautiful like this, and would make for a great sunrise photo (if the skies were not so overcast, that is). The road to the far end of the lake is not plowed, so once I arrived at Loon Lake I had to get on the snow shoes and walk 2.5 miles to the end. It was a beautiful morning for snow shoeing. I saw some semi fresh bear tracks in the snow, bobcat tracks (I think), and plenty of squirrel tracks. I also saw tire tracks. Apparently, some people had driven this road in their 4×4 to the end. I thought this was a bit crazy, it would be so easy to get stuck in the snow with your vehicle. There was no way in HE double hockey sticks that I would be driving my SUV along this road right now.

At the end of the lake is an outlet stream called Gerle Creek. It was flowing somewhat okay but it is still too early in the year for the full snowmelt to swell this creek to maximum. There are a couple waterfalls on this creek. The first is just a small one, just a little ways down from the lake. It is so small, I missed it on the way down. I was hoping to initially get to a bigger waterfall downstream, but I just could not make it. It was too difficult. Too much snow, brush, and swamp that had to be crossed (but the good news is that I think figured out an easier way to get to this other waterfall, so I will be returning very soon). I decided to turn around and on the way back found this small waterfall. I think it would be more impressive with more water flowing in the creek, but it was still kinda pretty.

Upper Gerle Creek Falls is only 19 ft. high. It would have been nice to move over a bit to the right to get more of the upper portion of the falls in the picture. That would have meant I’d be getting very wet, which I was not prepared to do. Also, my tripod leg had broken! One of the screws had fallen off, nowhere to be found. It had only one screw left and was hanging on by a thread. I was afraid the whole thing would collapse in the middle of taking a picture, and send everything crashing down into the creek, camera included. Nonetheless, I managed to stable it securely enough to take this photo. By this time, the sun had come out as well, making the falls a bit more difficult to photograph. What happened to those overcast skies that were supposed to be here all morning? Oh well, I was done anyway and started the long snow shoe hike back to my vehicle.

The town of Quintette has been keeping a secret from me. How naughty of them, trying to hide this waterfall from me. Sooner or later though, I will find it. And this past weekend, I did just that. Though it wasn’t easy.

I had actually heard about a waterfall here a couple years ago. But the person who told me did not know exactly where it was. I went there to search for it, but did not find it. Now I returned again, a couple years later, and after studying the topo maps, I had a good idea where the waterfall might be.

Access to the waterfall is a bit questionable, though the falls itself is on public land. Nonetheless, I headed down the old inactive logging road. It was late in the day, but I figured I had lots of time to get there and back. It was very warm, and the mosquitoes were already out. Not a good sign. In fact, I was pretty sure the creek would be completely dry. All the snow in Quintette had already melted. I probably should have been here a month earlier. Why even try now? Yet, I persevered onwards. I arrived down at the creek after a couple miles hiking, and lo and behold, the creek was still flowing decently well. Not overly well, but not too shabby. There was no waterfall there at the creek. But I knew in my head that the waterfall would be upstream. And that meant I would have to do a bit of bushwhacking. So up the creek and into the woods I went. There was a bit of a path up the creekside, so I knew that people had been up there before. Not too many though, and the trail had a lot of brush and branches to negotiate. I got a glimpse of the waterfall through the trees ahead, so I continued on. As I got closer, the going got a lot more difficult. The terrain was crumbly, and very steep. It was not easy. A fall would have hurt to say the least. Finally, I reached the bottom of the waterfall, and it was a nice one, 83 ft. high. With all the trees and branches around the area, it is not a particularly photogenic waterfall, but it was worth the trek to see it. By now it was getting quite late, so I took my photos quickly and headed back up the hill. The extra bit of scrambling up the creek bed made me later than I wanted to be, and I arrived back at my vehicle after sunset, just as it was getting dark.

This is called Little Hawaii Falls, near Manton in northern California. As far as waterfalls go, it is certainly not an exciting one or very interesting. But the greenery around the area is lush and gorgeous, and it definitely reminds one of the lushness of Hawaii.

If the waterfall was flowing at its best, it would certainly be a lot nicer, but it wasn’t and I was definitely expecting it to be flowing a lot better than it was.

Nonetheless, I did not make the trip all the way out to Manton just to see this waterfall. I was looking for some new waterfalls. Unfortunately, I struck out. All the creeks in the area were dry or just trickling. I was very surprised at this, and quite disappointed. It was a very rainy day and I ended up driving on a crazy 4×4 road out in the middle of nowhere. I drove over one unnamed creek flowing over the road (which made me think the other creeks would be flowing very well). That was a bit unnerving driving over because the creek was probably about a foot deep. As I continued, the road got worse and narrower and I thought I was going to get stuck, not able to go forward or backward. I managed to get to a point where I could turn the vehicle around, took a breath, and walked the rest of the way to the dry creek in the rain. Great.

We spent Mother’s Day weekend up in northern CA visiting the in-laws. I had hopes of doing a big hike on Monday to some new waterfalls, however the weather put a big damper on that idea. I got out in the rain, but didn’t do anything significant or get to any new stuff. It would not have been very pleasant to do a 12 mile hike in the pouring rain.

This shot was taken before the rain started, on Saturday evening. This is Lower Battle Creek Falls near Mineral. The creek was raging. When I was here last time, we were able to get right down in the creek at the base of the falls. I even brought my water shoes along so I could do a similar type of thing. What was I thinking. The creek was flowing far too deep and fast to do any such nonsense this time. This shot was taken from up on a rock on the steep hillside.

Yesterday my friend Rob and I took a trip out to Table Mountain in Oroville to check out some different waterfalls. I was “pretty sure” that the waterfalls there would still be flowing. Wrong. We went to four different falls and three were dry. Only one was flowing, but we arrived there too late. The sun was already shining directly in our faces in front of the waterfall. It was very difficult to photograph the waterfall because of this, and I was not very happy with how the photo turned out (however, I did post the picture below anyway).

The waterfall is Beatson Falls, one of a couple magnificent falls on Table Mountain (along with Phantom Falls). Beatson Falls, however, does not get very many visitors. It is a bit off the beaten path, I suppose, and not as many people venture over that way. It is not difficult to get to, however. But it is difficult to photograph.

The terrain on Table Mountain is just incredible. Here you are, walking along a very flat open grassy area, watching that you don’t step on any rattlesnakes, then all of a sudden you come to the edge of a monster canyon with massive death defying drop-offs. Streams flow through these canyons, and in the winter months they form huge waterfalls. All the canyons on Table Mountain seem to look alike, and all the waterfalls seem to look alike as well. It is an extraordinary landscape. At Beatson Falls, there are also very interesting pinnacle formations as well. I just wish the streams would have more flow to them. You have to get here immediately after a lot of rain or they will go back to being their dry normal selves again.

At Beatson Falls, it is very difficult to get a good view of the waterfall due to these death defying drop-offs. We chose the south side of the stream. We had very little time since the sun was already above the horizon. We found a viewpoint of the falls, but we had to get very near the edge of the canyon to see it. It was very un-nerving to be so close to the edge. Do not look down, and stop shaking your knees or you will wobble right off the edge! Unfortunately, the sun was right in our faces here. Rob decided to use his mountain goat capabilities and try photographing from the other side. I should have done this as well as he got a much better photograph, but it looked even more dicier on the other side, so I just chose to go down to the top of the falls and take some shots from there. The photo above is a small 5 foot cascade at the top of Beatson Falls.

Here’s a shot of the main waterfall. I will definitely be back here when the light is better.