Leon Turnbull Photography

I made a trip up to Ice House Reservoir this weekend for a snowshoe hike. I had 2 goals in mind: first was to catch sunrise on the lake (which, as you can see, I did), and the second was to find a new waterfall (which I also did, but you’ll have to wait to see that one).

I was rather unsure about how much snow would be up there. When you live in the valley, where it is sunny and warm, it is hard to gage how much snow is still in the mountains, and how much of it has already melted. As it turned out, there was still quite a lot of snow up in the mountains and at Ice House Reservoir. I anticipated that I might have to snowshoe in to the lake, and I was correct. You can drive to one end of the lake, but I wanted to get to the other end. I ended up snowshoeing about 9 miles total. At first, I was going to leave my snowshoes in the car. The snow was rock hard, and I didn’t think I would need them, plus I didn’t want to have to carry them 9 miles if I didn’t need to. Well, (fortunately) after hiking only a very short distance down the road, and sinking through the snow a few times, I realized I’d better run back to the car to grab my snowshoes. I’m glad I did that, cuz I definitely needed them this day. But all this running around and stuff made me later than I wanted to be. It was getting close to sunrise and I wasn’t near the lake yet. However, I arrived at a good spot down by the lake just in time to catch the sunrise. It was a beautiful morning.

This month’s special in my gallery consists of these three recent photos I took in the greater Sacramento area. You can purchase prints of any of these photos this month for half price. What a deal! Click the following link for details:

http://www.waterfallswest.com/gallery/sale.html

Yuba River Falls is a piddly little 14 ft. high waterfall, nothing too special at all. It is not actually on the Yuba River, it is on Spring Creek, so I’m not sure why it is called Yuba River Falls. But it is right along the South Yuba River, which is a very pretty river.

I was rather surprised there was absolutely no one else around at this location. It is a very popular spot (in the summer). But not on a rainy, winter day, I guess. It is also a popular spot for nude sun-bathers. But I didn’t see any of them around this day either. Jeepers, why not? It wasn’t that cold out. heh heh.

If you can’t trust the weather man, who can you trust? Whenever I go out hiking, I always check the weather beforehand. I find that accuweather.com usually has a fairly accurate forecast for the most part. Well, not this day. It was supposed to be a cloudy day, with the “light” rain showers on Friday all done with by Saturday morning. Well, I woke up in Folsom at 5AM, and found out it was still showering out. Okay, well, that’s not too bad. It would probably be fine by the time I started my hike. Up in Nevada City, my destination for the day, it was not just showering, it was “raining”. That was not on the agenda for today, let me tell you. Oh well, I don’t mind hiking in the rain. I just don’t like trying to take photos in the rain. It is rather difficult to keep water off the lens, while composing the image and taking the photo. The rain showers were off and on during my hike down to Humbug Creek Falls. But by the time I got to the waterfall, it was raining again. Hmm, okay, this will be fun trying to take a photo of this waterfall. I think I managed all right, though. It wasn’t really raining too hard, but it was a bit of a challenge.

It was quite difficult getting down to the base of the falls though. I had been here before 5 years ago, and I knew it was steep, but I thought it was do-able to get down to the falls. Well, it was steep for sure. The last part was down a steep section of slippery rock. The only way down to the bottom was on my bum. It wasn’t too far, so I wasn’t worried about hurting myself. But I was a bit worried about climbing back up on the slippery rocks. I might still be stuck down there, but I made it, and it wasn’t too hard after all.

After going to Humbug Creek Falls, I wanted to try to find a new waterfall on Kenebec Creek, which is along the same road to Malakoff Diggins State Park (Humbug Creek). A couple people had told me about one there, but the directions I had were not adequate. I found the creek all right, but it was a very small creek with hardly any water in it, despite all the rain. I also could not see any waterfall. I was expecting to see the waterfall from the road, but there was none to be seen. I saw where there could be a waterfall, as the creek seemed to drop quite steeply. But I could not see the creek at this point, it was too far off the road, and I could see no easy way down to it anyway. So if there is a waterfall there, it remains a mystery for now.

I posted earlier about the SPOT Satellite Messenger that I recently purchased, and indicated I would follow up with some info on how it actually works out in the wilderness. This device allows you to send a signal using GPS to your loved one to let them know exactly where you are (or a 911 help signal).

Well, I am happy to report, it works very well (if used properly). It is a little more finicky than a regular GPS device. In particular, it does not work while you are moving (hiking or driving). When you send a signal, you need to be in one place, with an open view of the sky, for about 10 minutes. I made the initial mistake of trying to send a signal while hiking. That did not work. But if you are not moving, it works very well. Essentially, what I do is send a “OK” signal (to my wife) before I begin my hike, as soon as I get to the trailhead. That gives it some time while I get all my hiking gear organized. Then I send additional signals when I get to a destination or am going to be resting for awhile. I find it needs about 5-10 minutes to send a successful signal.

There is a $50/year option (which I did not get), which allows you to send continuous signals every 10 minutes or so. But considering that the device only works well while you are staying still, it seems to me that this optional add-on would not work very well anyway. I’m glad I did not purchase that (I didn’t really see a need for it, anyway).

Also, it is difficult to determine if the signal was sent successfully or not. You can easily tell if the signal was NOT sent by the flashing lights. But unless you are constantly watching the device for 5-10 minutes, you have no idea if a signal was sent successfully. You can guess it was sent successfully after a 10 minute period, but you can’t really be sure. I wish it would beep or something when it was sending the signal.

In other news, I got a bad case of poison oak all over my legs, on my latest hike to Bear Creek Falls. I never used to get oak at all. But now, it seems I get it if I just look at it. It is agony I tell you. Will getting poison oak deter me from hiking to these out of the way, beautiful, waterfalls? Not likely.