Leon Turnbull Photography

With my family still out of town on their annual pilgrimage to the coast, leaving me home alone by myself all week, I (of course) wanted to get out and do some photography while they were away. After work on Monday, I decided to head up into the hills, to Wrights Lake. When I was here last year, I thought it might be a good place to come for sunset when there is snow on the mountains. We had our first snow fall of the year on Sunday, and I was hoping fresh snow along with some pretty clouds would make for a fabulous sunset. It was really just a light dusting of snow, however, and I was hoping for a bit more. As for the clouds, there were quite a few, and I thought when I first arrived that there were too many, and sunset would be a dud. But as sunset time approached, some of the clouds dissipated and it turned out to be an incredibly sweet sunset. The mountains turned incredibly bright red in color, and I had this amazing scene all to myself.

Well not quite all to myself, actually. I shared it with a friendly little visitor, named Daisy … Daisy Duck, that is. As I was waiting around for sunset, a little duck splashed right up beside me by the dock at Wrights Lake, and it swam around near to me without a care in the world that I was there. I changed lenses and took some shots, one of which is below. She was quite the funny little duck. As sunset approached, just before I took the above shot, the duck started to swim out into the middle of the lake, and was ruining the nice reflection. I called the duck back, just like one would call a dog or cat. Here ducky ducky. Here Daisy. Come here girl. It worked. The duck came back to me, swimming right up to me within 2 feet of me. This happened 2 or 3 times. This is a popular lake in the summer, and I guess the duck is very used to seeing people. Still though, it was definitely an extremely friendly little thing. Finally, as the color from the sunset faded, the duck swam off into the middle of the lake, I said goodbye to my little friend, and turned to go back to my home. It was a glorious evening.

My little friend:

This is Split Falls, the second waterfall on Fordyce Creek (15 ft. high). Getting to this one requires a bit of an off-trail scramble, but it is not difficult. You can’t get right down to the creek level though, you are up on this overhanging ledge. I got myself and my camera out right to the edge to get this shot. Then it started raining. I just continued on shooting in the rain, though my dog, Kaya, was trying to prod me to finish up and start hiking back. She’s normally very patient with me while I photograph, but I guess she didn’t like the rain too much. Well, it stopped raining anyway after a few minutes, so our hike back wasn’t too wet after all.

What is this? A waterfall in California with spring time flows in late September? Impossible, you say? But ’tis so, my friends. This is Fordyce Creek, near Emigrant Gap, and it is flowing just dandy. But how can this be? A ha, well that is the question, isn’t it? Fordyce Creek is a controlled water way, and this month PG&E has been dumping water from the upstream dam at Fordyce Lake, in order to facilitate making repairs on the dam. Great news for kayakers and waterfall hunters. Normally, this creek would be just a trickle at this time of year. There are two small but decent waterfalls on Fordyce Creek. This one is called Fordyce Falls (brilliant name, eh?) and it is 13 ft. high. But a word of warning: if you are reading this and decide you want to go, you’d better do it quickly cuz PG&E will be turning off the tap very soon (it is already half the flow it was when I was there last week).
Now admittedly, the waterfalls on Fordyce Creek are really nothing to write home about (13 and 15 ft. high), and it is a fairly long hike to go see them. That’s probably why I hadn’t been to them before now, though I did make an attempt a couple years ago. Nonetheless, when I learned that PG&E was releasing water, I figured that this was the time, and I immediately made my plans to go.

Since it is a long hike, I wanted to start hiking in the dark, in order to be at the falls by sunrise. I figured it would be easy to find the trailhead in the dark since I had been there before. Not! I had remembered there being a sign along the road at the trailhead. I found no signs, except a “no trespassing” sign. Could this be the right place? It just did not seem right, but I could not tell in the dark, so I decided to wait around the for the light. Fortune (I mean, God) was with me, as it was an overcast day, and thus it did not matter if I made it to the falls by sunrise; the light would still be good for photography. When it did get light, I was able to find “a trail”, and it wasn’t at the no trespassing sign, but it still wasn’t how I remembered it at all, and I ended up trampling through the forest using my GPS to guide me, until I finally got on the correct path that I remembered.

When I was here a couple years ago with my dog, Kaya, PG&E at that time was letting out water at Fuller Lake. The trail proper crosses the outlet of Fuller Lake (at a waterfall), and thus I came to a dead end, as I was not able to cross that raging stream, or I couldn’t get Kaya across, or maybe both (it was quite awhile ago, and my memory is fading). This year, the outlet stream was dry and it was easy for Kaya and myself to continue on. I wonder if she remembered that hike before – not likely, I couldn’t even remember it.

The trail leads down from Fuller Lake to Spaulding Lake, and then follows that lake to the end, where Fordyce Creek dumps into it. I was relieved when I heard Fordyce Creek and that it was flowing well (I was worried they might have turned off the tap). The trail then continues up Fordyce Creek, but well away from the creek. This was not good. The trail wouldn’t even go near the waterfalls, and I would miss them. Eventually, though, the trail wound its way back to the creek at the base of the 2nd waterfall. It was easy to get down to the creek to photograph it, and it was flowing beautifully. To get to the other waterfall, I had to back track down the trail to a spot where I could scramble over to it. It was not difficult to do that (for myself or Kaya). All in all, it was a fabulous day, and I was happy to finally get out to see these falls.

After work on Friday, I drove up to the mountains to find some Fall Colors. Last year at this time, Monitor Pass was at full peak for color. This year, not so much. It was still very green everywhere. We had a very warm and hot September here, and thus the leaves have not yet started to turn yet, but I was hoping Monitor Pass would have a bit more color as that area usually turns first. It didn’t. Well, they say it is supposed to really cool off this week, so by next weekend it should hopefully be much better.

When I arrived at the Aspen grove at the top of the pass, I found a large group (or two) of campers. They had their four wheelers all lined up and were making lots of obnoxious noise. Argh! Firstly, I think it is a strange place to be camping, there is not much around here (but if they’re just there to tear up all the trails with their four wheelers, I guess that makes sense – argh again!). Secondly, whenever I have been up here before, I have never seen very many people here. Maybe one or two (at the most) other people camping is all I have seen. Thirdly, they were completely blocking the road where I wanted to go! I could not drive around them where I wanted, and they were being too obnoxious and likely drunk, so I didn’t want to walk right through their camp. Instead, I made my way around to the other side of the grove. I found this scene with the moon rising over the trees and glowing in the late evening light. These trees had some yellow colors starting to show, but still were mostly green.

Here’s another one from my nice sunset evening at Folsom Lake last week, taken a bit earlier in the evening. There was no foreground I could use at all, with the lake so low the shoreline is rather ugly, so I just lined up my camera on the edge of the water and used the reflection as the foreground. It was a challenge to keep the kids from throwing rocks into the water near my camera, which would then mess up the reflection with ripples in the water. Sigh.