Leon Turnbull Photography

It was a cold night. I had all my clothes on but I was warm and I slept well. I had a leisurely breakfast, packed up, and climbed back up the mountain.

It was a 1300 ft. climb and I was tired when I got back up to the top of the ridge. My back was starting to hurt as well. What should I do now? The waterfalls I had initially planned to see were impossible to reach with the Gamboa trail obliterated. I thought about going down the Middle Fork Devils Canyon but that just seemed far too difficult. A 2000 ft. descent off trail and no idea if I could even make it down there. If I got stuck I would be in severe trouble. Did I say my back was hurting? I decided to go back down the Coast Ridge trail to Vicente Flat.

The water sources I passed on the day before were now completely dry. I was counting on filling up my water before I got down to Vicente. No dice on that. I should have enough, however.

The Vicente trail is a fairly popular one. It should be in good shape. Right? NOPE. Ventana Wilderness strikes again. The trail was very overgrown with a lot of tree blowdowns. There was one spot where I literally had to take off my pack and crawl on my belly under the brush, dragging my pack along with me. I was so tired of this crap. If there was anything more as bad as this I was going to turn around and go home. Thankfully there was not anything else like that and eventually I made it down to the Vicente Creek confluence. There was a nice camping spot here so I decided to stay here instead of going down to the official camp which was another half mile further. I was tired and it was getting late.

Somehow I managed to get a poison oak rash and I had not even gone up to the waterfall yet. I have no idea how. I had not seen any poison oak at all in the last couple days of hiking. There was a little bit on the trail down to Vicente but I was certain I had not touched it. Apparently I must have because when I woke up in the morning I had a bad rash. I knew there was a lot of oak going up to Vicente Falls and I was prepared for that but I was mad at myself that I already had a rash before I even started that hike.

There is no trail to Vicente Falls. It is about a half mile upstream and you just walk straight up the creek and along the side of the creek (in the poison oak). It is not too difficult and it is fun. Except for a couple parts where (yet again) there were some big tree blowdowns in the canyon from the Dolan Fire. This made the hike almost impassable but not quite. I was able to continue past them and made it up to the waterfall.

Vicente Falls is a magnificent and stunning 191 ft. cascade. It is definitely worth seeing and enduring the poison oak. Especially at high flows. I took my time and enjoyed the views although there was only one composition for taking photos. Everything else was covered in too much mist. That is all right. As I was enjoying the waterfall a squirrel came up close to me. We did not see each other and scared the crap out of each other when we did. He took off running down the hill and across the creek and up the other side to get away from me. Ha ha.

I returned to camp and ate my breakfast before packing up and going home. I only saw two other groups of backpackers all weekend, both going up the trail from Vicente camp this morning. One of them were a couple of girls with a dog. I love my Journey and I want to take her backpacking but I have to say that Ventana Wilderness is no place for dogs. It is just far too difficult. Too brushy. Too hot. Poison oak. Scarce water. This dog seemed to be doing all right but what about the ticks! There is no way this dog got home with less than 20 ticks on him, I guarantee it.

I got back to the car at about 1:30PM and drove home, stopping for well deserved pizza along the way. It was a wild weekend in Ventana Wilderness.

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The final snow stats are in as of Apr 1: snow pack is 124% of normal (north), 107% (central), and 100% (south). Precipitation is at 97% (north), 86% (central), 85% (south). So as you can see we ended the season just slightly above normal for snow pack. After the Great Blizzard the first weekend in March we had nothing at all until the last week. It is a bit unfortunate it is not more but it is pretty good. We will have a good spring season for waterfallin.

I had never been to Pinnacles National Park before and Saturday of Easter weekend seemed like a good day to try it. I was not expecting too much. It had rained over two inches there in the past week. I was hoping to see at least three decent waterfalls and something else as well. Meh. It turned out to be better than I expected, exactly as I expected, and also worse than I expected.

I was risen at 3AM. It is a very long drive. Thus the reason I had not been there before. Also it does not rain much there. Thus the second reason. I arrived at sunrise. There were already people there starting out on the cave trail before me.

I wanted to do the cave trail first. This is a very popular hike and I did not want to do it with a lot of other people on the trail. I saw just three other groups on the trail so it wasn’t too bad. I first came upon Moses Springs Falls, a tall 72 ft. waterfall but not exactly a high flowing stream. With the recent rain, however, it was kinda cool to stand right under this one. My photo (to be posted laster) did not do it justice, it was much better in person. Unfortunately there is poison oak there and I did not realize it before I touched it. Ugh.

After this you enter the caves. This was perhaps the highlight of the hike. It was much better than anticipated and very cool. A lot of the time you are hiking through the creek bed. It is completely dark. (of course I had my headlamp). The deepest part was up to my shins. One section you had to climb straight up a small cascade. Other parts were so narrow I could barely fit through them. I had to really squeeze (and I am not fat, obviously). There are a couple decent waterfalls in here as well but it is too dark to photograph them. One in particular I thought for quite some time about trying to photograph but decided not to. After the caves you come to some steps to climb up and beside the main highlight: Bear Gulch Cave Falls, 34 ft. high. This is the main waterfall I wanted to see on this trip. I knew it would be decent after the rain, and it was just exactly as I expected. It is a bit difficult to photograph from halfway up the steps. I’m not sure how much of the waterfall is man-made, being just below the man-made reservoir, but it is a very pretty drop.

I went back down on the Rim trail and when I got back to my car I found the parking lot completely full (it is not a big lot). I drove down to the lower lot and it was almost completely full as well. It was only about an hour after sunrise. I first hiked down to the lower Bear Gulch Creek Falls but found it completely dry. That was very disappointing especially because there was quite a bit of water in the creek (it seems to go underground before the waterfall). For my third hike, I wanted to hike up the Condor Gulch trail for two reasons: One, there are a couple waterfalls on this hike. I was not expecting much from them and it was even worse than I expected. The trail comes to the top of Condor Gulch Falls but there is no view of the waterfall. It did not look like much of a waterfall anyway but I’ll maybe try again some other day when it is flowing better.

The second reason I wanted to hike up this trail was to see the condors. I have never seen any condors in the wild before, and “Condor Gulch” seemed like a good spot to see some. I was right on all accounts. There were many soaring above me. I did not go all the way to the top but came to an open spot where it seemed a perfect place for lunch and to watch the birds soaring through the canyon. As soon as I arrived, one of them flew right over my head very close. I did not have my camera ready, but a short while later it happened again, and this time I did have my camera ready. I’m not sure I got any decent shots of it, however, because my tripod was not working properly. We’ll see. Anyway, it was a very cool experience seeing these amazing birds. When it started to rain, I hiked back down to the car and then made the long drive home. I was so tired I slept for 11 hours that night. I was up in time for church to celebrate the most important day of the year. Jesus risen from the grave to save us, all of us. It was a great weekend at Pinnacles National Park.

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I did not get the poison oak itch too horribly bad. A few spots. I have had better but I have had worse. I definitely made the right decision leaving early and washing up when I got home. My wife still thinks I am an idiot for hiking anyplace where this is oak. LOL. But dang, Manning Falls was an awesome waterfall.

This is Upper Salmon Creek Falls. It was not particularly easy getting down to it. The slope is steep and the ground is very hard. You will definitely be sliding down, not walking down. Thankfully there is no cliff. I was very much impressed with this one, it was much better than I expected. I measured it to be 26 ft. high, but it seems more like 36 ft. when you are down there. It is better in real life than in pictures. It is a beauty.

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The sun is out. It is time for backpacking! Let’s go to Big Sur!

I wasn’t really sure about this hike as far as a backpacking trip goes. It is only a 2 mile hike. I could easily do it as a day hike. The problem is that it is so far from home. There is no way I could do it as a day hike. Either I would have to stay in a hotel somewhere, or stay in a campground somewhere, or backpack. I chose to backpack.

I arrived at the Salmon Creek Falls trailhead at about 9:15am. I went up to the waterfall by the road first. I was quite surprised at how strongly Salmon Creek Falls was flowing. It has not rained in quite some time. The Great Blizzard was two weeks ago but even with that storm the central coast did not get that much rain. I figured Salmon Creek would be mellow. Instead it was roaring. It was a good sign.

I continued up to camp and arrived about noon. This trail was a lot easier than I expected as well. I thought there would be a lot more elevation gain in the two miles up to camp. The campsite was not very exciting. There was very little sun. That might be good in the summer, but not so much in the winter. I had my lunch, set up camp, relaxed for a few hours (trying to find some sun to sit in), ate my dinner, then set out on a waterfall search.

I thought it would be a pretty easy hike to the first waterfall. It was less than a mile from camp. It was off-trail of course but I thought it would take an hour at most, probably less. It took 2 hours. And it was certainly not easy. In fact, it was absolutely grueling. It was almost impossible. And the poison oak!

From the trail you need to scramble down a very steep and hard slope to Salmon Creek, cross Salmon Creek, and then scramble up to the falls. Once down at Salmon Creek I could not find the creek confluence. It was not exactly where it is indicated on the USGS Topo map and the location was not obvious. I eventually found it. I thought it would be an easy creek walk up to the falls. Ha! It started out well enough but soon I came to a blockage (small waterfall) with no way to continue. There was a bit of a path (people have been to this one before), and it seemed to go up and around the blockage, however this route did not work either. I got cliffed out.

By now I had spent a lot more time in this canyon than anticipated and it was starting to get late. I was ready to give up and I started to head back down. I decided to try one more thing, climbing straight up the mountain to the very top of the ridge. Maybe I could traverse the ridge and at least get a good view of the waterfall from the top. It was not easy. I came to a few difficult spots. I thought about turning back more than once. I did not really want to continue on, it was much too hard, but I decided to at least go on until I reached my turn-around time. The biggest problem along the traverse was the poison oak. It was atrocious and unavoidable. I was in it like gangbusters. I could now glimpse the top of the falls but there was no clear view. I had to descend down across a steep ravine and up the other side. The waterfall was right there but still no clear view. There was a steep descent down to the bottom. I did not want to do it (I would have to climb back up after), but now I was so close that I had to do it. I made it down to the base of the waterfall. The poison oak down at the bottom was out of this world. I have never seen so much. I could not get photos from up close because it was so misty so I had to find a spot further back, setting up my tripod and standing right in the middle of the oak. This was not going to be pretty later.

Manning Falls is 100 ft. high exactly. Touchdown! I don’t know if it is named after Eli or Peyton. ha ha. Actually I think it is named after the person who discovered it. That’s kinda crappy. How many waterfalls have I discovered and none named after me. Well, Manning Falls is very pretty at low flows but at high flow like this it is spectacular. Absolutely magnificent. Was it worth the effort? I think so but maybe ask me again in a couple days when I see how bad my poison oak is.

It took an hour to hike back to the trail. There was still time so I went to Upper Salmon Creek Falls. This was easier but still quite hard to get down to.

When I got back to camp it was a little before sunset. I knew the poison oak would be bad so I made a new decision. I would pack up, hike back to the car in the dark, and drive home so I could wash up. I arrived back home at about 1am. So essentially this turned out to be just a day hike after all (carrying a heavy backpack) but I think it was a good decision. It was an incredible day in Silver Peak Wilderness.

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Over the past 3 months and a bit I have worked very hard. I lost 20 pounds in weight during that time. It took a lot of discipline, exercising 6 days a week, and not eating any extra snacks/desserts at all (except for 1 day per week when I allowed myself to eat anything I wanted). It worked! Mission Complete. Now I am back at my ideal weight, I feel in great shape, and I am ready for backpacking season! Except that it is winter and we still need a lot more snow! As of Feb. 1 the snowpack in California is at 170% of normal (north), 209% (central) and 252% (south). Rain is at 136% (north), 173% (central), 169% (south). This is good of course but we are still in a drought and we still have 2 months of winter left. A lot more is needed to end the drought. In fact, to be honest, we really need about four good winters in a row to get back to normal in CA. Not sure that will ever happen but let’s just take it one year at a time.

Anyway, it was time to celebrate! And gain all that weight back in one single weekend. Ha ha! It was my wife’s and my birthday and we decided to go to Monterey for the weekend. The ocean is my wife’s favorite place to be. I did not have much on the agenda for myself (ie. waterfalls), except for Saturday morning I said I wanted to go see a couple falls. There really wasn’t much in the Big Sur area that was open (everything is still closed from the storms), so I thought we should go north instead to the Santa Cruz area. I wanted to go to three waterfalls and we had very little time because it was supposed to be sunny and all these falls get early sun. I had 30 minutes to get to the three of them. Thankfully they were all very close to each other, but unfortunately I only made it to two and it was not because of the sun.

Elliot Creek Falls was the best one of the two, a very gorgeous 56 ft. high waterfall along the beach. It was easy getting down to the beach and it was very beautiful and we were the only ones there at sunrise. Except for a dead sea lion. Eck.

I should have made it to the third waterfall. The tide was well on the way out. I thought it would be easy. It should have been easy. However, the waves were still crashing up against the cliffs. There was no way to get past them and to the waterfall. It was a bit disappointing but nothing I could do. Well, it was a very lovely weekend in the Monterey and Santa Cruz area and my wife was happy.

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