Thanksgiving Day. I was on my way up north to visit family and I had Journey with me. The plan was to get in a morning hike before Thanksgiving dinner. To the waterfall with 100 names: Fairy Falls, Shingle Falls, Dry Creek Falls, Beale Falls. We arrived at the trailhead 30 minutes late. It was Journey’s fault but she is so cute, I cannot be mad at her. However, we had to run down the trail to make up time. No time to smell the flowers. I promised her she could smell them all on the way back when we could take it slow (and she did).
We got to the upper Falls in time. I took some photos. It was not flowing too great but it was all right. When I was here with my previous dog, Kaya, many years ago, we tried to get down to the bottom at the upper waterfall. Kaya could not do it. Kaya was a master at steep rock scrambling, so I knew if she could not do it, there is no way Journey could do it and I did not even try. However, Kaya was able to get down to the bottom of the lower Falls. I hoped Journey would be able to, however, it was much steeper than I expected. She did not want to and I did not want to force her. There was another path down to the bottom, however, and Journey was able to get down this way even though it was quite steep as well. Excellent job, Journey! The problem was that you cannot see the waterfall from this location, but I could see it if I scrambled up on the rocks. So that is what I did. Again, I left Journey safely, and she could see me the entire time. She waited in perfect patience for me as I took photos of the lower falls. She was very awesome.
We took our time hiking back. She smelled all the flowers. And all the dog poop as well. We saw one other guy with his dog and then a huge group of people. We made it in time for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a great morning at Fairy Falls.
I realized that most of the hikes on my list now are very difficult ones. I have done pretty much all the easy ones. All that is left are ones with cliffs, steep rocky terrain, river crossings, etc. to negotiate. Our new puppy Journey cannot do these types of hikes.
Yet I want to take Journey on many hikes to waterfalls in the future (or even without waterfalls). So I have started making a second list now. Hikes that I have done before which I know are easy enough for her to do. I will be revisiting waterfalls that I have seen before once or maybe multiple times. At the same time (not exactly the same time – ha ha) I will also be continuing the hikes by myself which are more difficult. Ch-ch-changes are in the air for me.
First on the list: American Canyon Creek Falls. I chose this one first very intentionally as I will explain shortly. It is a fairly easy hike down the trail until you get to the waterfall. There are ticks and poison oak, but in November, there is none of that. Good thing I chose November for this one, otherwise she would have picked up a bunch of the little beasts (although she still did manage to get a couple of them on her – ugh). Of course the creek is also low in November and it has not rained much yet, but I figured it would still be all right.
The first new thing I learned about Journey: She doesn’t care about horse poop or bear poop, only dog poop. There was plenty of all three on the trail and she completely ignored the first two. The second thing is this: she is quite scared of going down steep rocky terrain. Of course she has not ever done this before and hopefully she will get a lot better with it. The last part down to the creek is quite steep and she would not go down. She would also not let me carry her. She did manage to get down one steep part but then could not get back up afterwards so I had to lift her back up. Anyway there is no way she could get down to the creek level. This is what I suspected would happen and this is the big reason why I came here. I wanted to see how she would do, while waiting for me to take my photos. I tied her up in a safe spot and then went down to the creek, crossed it, and took photos. She could see me the entire time and she sat down and waited for me with perfect patience! She was absolutely very awesome. I was proud of her. I took my photos quickly and went back up to her.
You will notice that there is now a big new rock embedded in the middle of the waterfall. Well this is a big change. Ugh. This definitely has ruined the prior character that this waterfall once had but it creates a new character for it. Is it better or worse? Well I definitely liked the old character much better, but I admit it is still interesting and I think at higher flows it will even be more interesting.
We hiked back up the trail to the car and went home. I don’t even think Journey was very tired. She wanted to play fetch with mom as soon as we got back home (after she ate her hamburger, of course).
Thanks to waterfallswest friend Scotty for sharing this great find.
As of March 1, the snow pack in California is at 151% of average (north), 196% (central) and 231% (south). Precipitation is 117% of average (north), 158% (central) and 167% (south). If all the complainers back in January got their way then we would only be at normal average for the year, and still would be in a horrible drought this summer and likely seeing more forest fires than normal. I am happy to say the complainers did not get their way (though I thought they would when the rains stopped back in January). The storms picked up again with a vengeance in late February and are continuing into March. The snow pack is near an all time high. The waterfalls will be flowing well this year throughout the entire summer. The Madman is very happy. We still have a moderate to severe drought in most areas of California but this continues to improve. By spring I think the drought may be mostly gone. You may be wondering how is this all possible? We have La Nina conditions, exactly the same as last year. Every single weather forecaster said we would have another well below average winter. Every single one. There is really only one explanation in my opinion: God. He has answered all our prayers for rain and snow and to end the drought. In one fell swoop. Thank you Lord but I have to admit the extremes in California just kill me. I would much prefer to just have an average season every year.
Anyway enough of that. Onto my hike this weekend. I had no idea this waterfall (waterfalls) existed. It is an unnamed creek. I did not even consider it in my research. Why would I? However, with all the rain we have had, the creek is flowing very well and I could see from my friend’s photos that this would be a great waterfall find and definitely worth visiting. I did not know exactly where it was located on the creek. I assumed it would be down by the river. That was most logical. So I hiked the trail all the way down to the confluence at the river. No waterfall. Ugh. It must be upstream somewhere.
Now things got very hairy. I started bushwhacking up the creek. Bushwhacking indeed! The poison oak was absolutely atrocious. I gave up even trying to avoid the stuff. I can only hope I scrubbed it all off when I got home. There was a path in places but mostly it was a crazy bushwhack up the mountain, in the creek, through the brush, through the oak. I almost gave up. Where are those darn waterfalls anyway? I did not want to go back down to the river. That would have been just too hard. There was a big storm coming and the rain was supposed to start very soon. But I was not sure I would be able to exit upstream. It was incredibly brushy and getting worse and worse. I bushwhacked the entire length of the creek from the bottom to the top (to where it finally crossed the trail). I found a couple lower waterfalls that were 20 ft high (but hard to photograph). Finally I reached the main waterfall, an outstanding 41 ft. high cascade. I found it! We shall call it Drivers Flat Falls. I relaxed here a bit, taking many photographs. Then I continued going up the creek hoping to find an exit point so I would not have to retreat back down all the way to the river (thankfully I found one). It was a marvelous day in Auburn State Recreation Area.
I hate it when people complain about the rain and call for it to stop when we are still in the middle of winter. There are still 2.5 months of winter left! News flash: If the rain stops now then we will still be in a drought at the end of this winter and we will still end up below average for the year. Although with all these recent storms some areas are very close to the Apr 1 average already but other areas are not (especially the north). Also, we need much more than just an average year for the drought to end. Do you want to continue in drought and continue to have more fires than normal next summer? I sure don’t. California needs more rain not less. Stop complaining. But these people are going to get their wish. The rain is going to be stopping next week. Okay, end rant.
Anyway, I wanted to go hiking this past weekend but I did not want to drive too far. I decided to return to Paradise Canyon Falls on the Middle Fork American River. It had been a long time since I’ve been here and I did not have a good photo of it. With all the recent rain I figured it should be flowing quite well, much better than I’ve ever seen it before. Or would it?
I arrived at the trailhead and found that there is now a $10 parking fee. Ugh! What a ridiculous amount of money to pay for day parking at a state park. What choice did I have? I was going to be on a long hike. There was no way around it. I thought I could park back on the main road and walk in but you had to pay for parking there as well.
There was not very much water flowing in Mile Hill Creek at the trailhead. That was not where I was going but it was not a good sign. Then I came to the first creek crossing down at the river. There was so much water flowing in this creek it was almost uncross-able. Now that was a good sign. Paradise Canyon Creek also had a lot of water flowing in it. In fact, it was pretty much perfect. This waterfall is one of those that needs a lot of water to look nice. It certainly would have been much better a week earlier but then I would not have been able to photograph it. In order to photograph it you need to cross the creek right at the bottom of the falls. It was not an easy task and the water was deep. In higher water it would have been impossible. Even if I could have crossed a week earlier there would have been far too much mist. So Paradise Canyon Falls was about perfect on this day. Paradise Regained.
I continued on the trail along the river in search of other waterfalls. I did find a small one though it wasn’t really all that special. I ate my lunch and then hiked back. It was a perfect day in Auburn State Recreation Area.
On Friday night I checked the weather forecast for Saturday morning. One app tells me it was going to be raining all Saturday morning. The other app says partially sunny. What the heck? This is a very big difference. It is less than 12 hours beforehand and they cannot figure out what the weather is going to be like? That is unbelievable to me. It is the difference between the GFS and the European weather models I guess but this close to the actual time they should be in alignment. So which one would be right? Usually the European model is more correct but this time it was GFS. So that meant it was raining on Saturday morning. That is what I woke up to. It was not raining too much in the morning though, just very light off and on. So I guess they were both wrong. Nothing surprising then.
My Plan A hike was going to be a very short, easy hike, close to home. I was pretty confident I could do this hike …until I ran into a big huge fence in which it would be a major crime to cross over it. No trespassing here. I was not expecting that at all. I was bummed. I wasn’t confident at all for my Plan B hike but decided to drive over to check it out. No trespassing again. Strike two. I needed something that would be a sure thing. My Plan C hike would be just that, one that I have done before. Many times before, in fact. American Canyon Creek Falls. Old Faithful.
It was lightly raining as I hiked down the trail. I anticipated it getting worse now as it was much later in the morning. Maybe I should just go back to bed. I continued on, however. I have a new Gopro camera for an early Christmas gift and I really wanted to try it out today. (thanks Tara and Meredy, by the way!) Last time I was here, the poison oak was growing tremendously over the trail. It was unavoidable. At this time of year, however, no poison oak. No ticks either. By the time I reached the falls the rain had stopped. Just long enough to take photos. Sweet perfect timing, Lord.
It was raining harder as I hiked back up the trail but I did not mind. I was happy. It was a lovely morning hike to my favorite little waterfall in Auburn State Recreation Area.
