After dark a girl came into the Lion Den, setting up her camp right next to me, IN MY SPACE. Why couldn’t she pick a different spot well away from everyone else? I would never set up camp right next to someone. It is just rude. Afterwards, she and the other guy (who borrowed my water filter) ended up chatting well into the night when I was trying to sleep. The guy was loud. So disrespectful. You don’t know how to boil water and you don’t know how to be quiet when someone is sleeping? Well maybe I am not going to feel bad about waking you when I get up super early and pack up my camp.
After all that I slept fairly well, actually. I was up at 5AM in the dark and packed up. I did try to be as quiet as possible but it is impossible to be completely quiet when you are packing up a tent and all your gear. I don’t know if the guy woke up but I am pretty sure the girl did. Well, she should not have set up her camp in my space.
My primary goal for this trip was to get down to Jewel Falls. It is a four mile hike from the campsite and it gets early sun so this is why I had to hike in the dark. Much of the hike is on a road. I did not even realize that it was possible to drive your vehicle on this road. I saw a few cars parked along the road including one exactly at the trail where I had to go down to the falls. They were blocking the trail. What am I supposed to do about this? I had no choice but to walk through their camp. They heard me in their tent so I said “just passing through”. The guy rudely said “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” I said, “going down to the waterfall”. On the way back they were up and the guy again was rude to me, saying “it’s not cool to walk through our camp, DUDE”. “Well DUDE, you are literally blocking the trail, what the H&*& am I supposed to do?”. I was really kinda ticked off with them, frankly. I tried to be nice and polite and received rudeness in return. If you are going block access to a hiking trail you need to expect someone is going to come through your campsite.
It did not help that my hike was an UTTER FAILURE and I was upset about that and feeling extremely disappointed. I know people have been down to Jewel Falls in the past but it was the distant past. Jewel Falls is LOST. The trail is now completely overgrown. Impassable. The brush was OVER MY HEAD. I tried going through it. I tried multiple routes to find a way through or around it. I tried my best. I could not do it. I retreated. At least there was no more poison oak.
On the way back I saw a guy parked along the road with his car hood up, looking into it. For the third time this trip I was nice again, asking if he needed help (though there was nothing really I could do to help him). He was polite though, at least, and said he was fine.
There were a lot of hikers on the way back down the Salmon Creek Falls trail. A lot of day hikers. Too many hikers. Some had dogs. Hopefully they escaped the ticks. One dog was barking at me, probably because the trail was narrow and he could not get by. The lady apologized but I told her I have a barking dog as well. Journey will bark her head off to protect her mama but if she is alone with me she will not bark at all. Funny girl. I decided to stop at Upper Salmon Creek Falls. It was about 11AM and still in shade. I was not planning to go down here again and I skipped it on the way up. However, since I failed at Jewel Falls I decided to go down to this waterfall. It was a small consolation. I did manage to get a different composition from the last time I was here so that is a plus. I got back to the car at about 1:30PM and made the long drive home. It was a rough two days in Ventana Wilderness.
Ventana Wilderness. I am a glutton for punishment. Why do I always return here? Brush as thick as thieves. Poison oak as abundant as bunnies in spring. Ticks as huge as dragon flies. It is not going to be pretty.
I left the house at 3:30AM. The fog is back. It is back with a vengeance. Visability was down to about 20 ft. I swear. This fog was thicker than we had it earlier this winter. At least from what I saw. I have not seen fog this thick since I was little. The fog going up the Rossland Trail hill in British Columbia where I lived was thicker than pea soup in winter. And my dad drove up it like gangbusters. Ha ha. Well I slowed down for this fog. And then it was gone. Just like that. And then it returned again further along. So this is how it is going to be, eh?
Highway 1 is open now. This cuts off about 30-40 minutes from my drive. I knew it was going to be a busy weekend there with the holiday and with it being the first weekend the road has been open in years. I was not wrong.
I arrived at the Salmon Creek Falls trailhead at about 8:30AM. There were already a lot of people here. I wanted to get a photo of the big waterfall from the bottom this time. I did not have a photo from there yet. I was able to get right up to it although it was not easy and involved a lot of creek crossing and boulder scrambling. There were tree branches obsuring the view but I expected that. So all was good.
I did make a huge mistake, however, and got into the poison oak. I was not paying attention. So before I even started my big hike I already had poison oak on me. I tried to wash it off but it did not help. I ended up getting a bad rash including some in my eye. Argh.
I had thought about bringing Journey on this hike but wisely decided not to. I was worried about the ticks. I have heard that the ticks are already horrendous this year and this is Ventana Wilderness. Tick Central. The worst place on Earth. The ticks are the size of dragon flies (almost). As it turned out there were not that many after all. I saw just one on the first day. The next day there were more, about ten, and one that got on me. Not really bad. I was expecting much worse. Even so, Journey probably would have gotten a few on her but that didn’t turn out to be the biggest problem. The hike was incredibly difficult, gaining 3000 ft. in elevation. I was dead tired by the end of the day. Journey has not done 3000 ft. before so I think she would have really struggled on the hike.
I arrived at Lion Den camp about 2PM. It did not occur to me until afterwards but it is not necessarily such a great idea to camp somewhere named “lion den”. This could get really bad. Why is it called this? There was one other guy already at the camp. For some reason he did not take the best spot. He left it for me. It was a fantastic spot up on a bluff with an ocean view. It may have been because he had a hammock but there was a spot on the bluff in which he could have set that up. I did not complain. I was treated to a very beautiful sunset. Apparently his water filter had broken and he was trying to boil water for drinking but not able to do so. I do not understand how you go backpacking and cannot boil water. Nonetheless, after I was finished using mine I let him borrow it so he could filter his water. I am such a nice guy! He was grateful but apparently not that grateful and I may have regretted being so nice. Stay tuned for the rest of the story …
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.
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.
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.
