Leon Turnbull Photography

Here is another shot from our trip to the Sacramento Zoo a couple weekends ago. I have been busy busy busy working on projects at home lately. Not much time to get out hiking. But I did go out today. After a very dry month and a half, we finally had another winter storm. The creeks are all flowing again (for now). I went back again to Table Mountain in Oroville, and got to three new waterfalls there (Coon, Long/Ranch, and Crevice). I have now finally gotten to all of the many waterfalls on Table Mountains, except for perhaps one (which is on private property). I will talk about more of this hike coming up soon.

In the meantime, it is my son’s birthday tomorrow, and my daughter’s next week. We are having a combined birthday party for them both today. It should be quite fun for them. Now I gotta run so I am not late for it. heh heh.

I have been busy lately. Trying to get my new computer all figured out. Yes, I bought a new computer. Shockingly, it is a Macintosh computer. I have ALWAYS been a PC guy. So why on Earth would I ever be so dim witted as to purchase a Macintosh, you ask? Great question! The answer is an interesting but simple one. I am planning to write an iPhone app for my site, waterfallswest.com. Yes folks, the waterfallswest iPhone app is coming soon, hopefully within a couple months. Anyway, in order to make an iPhone app, you essentially MUST use a Mac, and since I needed a new computer anyway, I figured I may as well go all out and get a nice iMac computer with a nice monitor. So that is exactly what I did. I have been busy getting things set up on it (plus, I bought a new desk to put both the new and old computers on). Now everyone who is anyone (not named Gates) says that Mac is so great and so easy and so much better than PC. But my thoughts so far are exactly the opposite. I know I will eventually get used to the new things, but I have had a lot of growing pains thus far. It is not so easy or intuitive to navigate around Mac compared to PC. And for software that I was using on PC that worked so simply and easily, when I install the Mac version of it on Mac, it does not work at all, and I have had to do a lot of finagling to get things to work. It is not so simple and easy as advertised. At least that is my experience so far.

Anyway, onto to better things. And that is the monitor, which IS A WHOLE LOT better than my old monitor. This is the first photo I processed on the new computer. It looks so crisp and sharp and perfect on the new monitor. On my old monitor, it looks just ok, but rather on the dull side. So I am wondering how it looks on everyone else’s monitor (my old one is really not a great monitor, but it is what I have been using for the past few years).

But you may be wondering where this waterfall is, because you have certainly never heard of it before. Correct? This is Alder Creek Falls, near Kyburz. It is a fabulous, rushing, 42 ft. high cascade on Alder Creek, but it is definitely rather tricky to get to this one. I have long suspected (but never confirmed until now) that there was a decent sized waterfall on Alder Creek. Once previously I tried to get to it following the west side of the creek, and although there is a trail there, it quickly disintegrates, and it becomes far too brushy and steep to continue on that side. This time, I wanted to try following the east side. There is a bit of a private property issue on the east side of the creek, but I bypassed that without “too” much difficulty. The waterfall on Alder Creek is exactly where I anticipated it to be (that in itself is somewhat miraculous). It is, however, very unfortunately, very difficult to get down to. In fact, it is downright impossible to get to the bottom of the falls (unless you happen to be Superman). It is also pretty much impossible to photograph completely, due to overhanging tree branches in the way. I was standing on the edge of a rather large cliff, and trying to photograph it. The upper section in isolation, shown here, is a bit easier to photograph. This is just the top part of the falls, which is about half of it (20 ft.). I did take another photo showing a bit more of it, and it is on my website page for this waterfall, but I liked this photo much better.

In addition to Alder Creek Falls, I found more smaller cascades along Alder Creek, and another nice waterfall on Screech Owl Canyon Creek. All in all, it was a fantastic morning near Kyburz.

http://www.waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=702
http://www.waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=701

It is not a waterfall. But it does roar.

This was from a family outing to the Sacramento Zoo a couple weekends ago. The kids (along with their cousin) had a fun time there seeing all the animals. And daddy had fun taking photos. I think this one was my favorite cuz the lion is looking right at me. 🙂

You may think I was lost out in the middle of nowhere getting to this small waterfall in a remote area of Eldorado National Forest. The name of this creek is appropriately Lost Canyon Creek. I was not lost, though maybe a bit crazy being out here. Actually, I was trying to find a waterfall on a different creek (Slab Creek).  I did not find a waterfall on that creek, however I do still think there are waterfalls on Slab Creek, and someday I will get back out here and find them.

It is a very long drive out to this area. It is probably less than 60 miles from where I live in Folsom, but it is a slow, winding road, and it took a lot longer than I anticipated. In addition, the road had a large number of potholes, and there were  a lot of fallen trees in the road. This made for very slow going as I constantly had to slow right down to drive around all the obstacles. And after striking out in my search along Slab Creek, I really did not want to go home empty handed. And fortunately, I just happened to see this small waterfall on Lost Canyon Creek as I was hiking up Slab Creek. Admittedly, it is not much of a waterfall, and not very photogenic with all the fallen logs and branches in the way. But it was still better than going home empty handed.

http://www.waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=1641

Happy birthday to me! I ventured out on my birthday to try to find a new waterfall and I found one! I must say that made for a great day. What better way to spend your birthday than scrambling through brush and poison oak, down steep mountainsides, and ending up at a fabulous hidden waterfall!

I definitely was surprised though, that I found anything at all. I was not sure if there was even a waterfall on Tiger Creek.  Well, I knew there was one somewhere, but I did not know exactly where. And I thought it would be just a small one in the 20 ft. range, if there was one at all. The biggest thing though, was that on Google Earth the terrain looked very brushy and steep. I did not think I would even get down to Tiger Creek at all. As it turned out though, it was not really too steep or too brushy. Certainly I have done much worse in my days. I made it down to the creek where I thought the waterfall might be without too much difficulty. But there was no waterfall there. Just a very small little drop, maybe 10 ft. or so in height. That was not what I was hoping for. Maybe there was not any waterfall on Tiger Creek at all. Well, I thought, it might be upstream. I had marked a secondary location possibility on my GPS,  about a half mile up the creek, so I headed up in that direction. And when I got there, I found a very nice little 20 ft. falls. It made me very happy that I had found a decent waterfall on this creek. I had to photograph it from the other side of the creek, so I put on my water shoes and went across. It was EXTREMELY COLD. While photographing the waterfall on the other side, I saw that there was an upper (and larger) waterfall above it. This made me even happier! I took my photos, went back across, tried to warm my numb feet, put on my hiking boots, then went on to this upper falls. It was really a beauty, a 2 tier drop totaling 43 ft. in height. It would have been perfect if it were not for a large tree that was blocking the view. The only way, again, to photograph it would be from the other side of the creek, but this time, it was not possible to get across. It was flowing too fast up here and too deep. With a little less flow, it could have been crossed quite easily I think. But I didn’t really want to fall and go over that 20 footer below. So I tried to photograph it as best I could from this side. The photo pictured here is the middle tier (the upper tier is immediately above and out of the picture). I will definitely be returning to this one someday.

http://www.waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=599