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 is a very long drive down from Monterey to Salmon Creek Falls. I have been down there a few times now, and it always takes much longer than I think it will. You would think I’d have learned by now. I have to say I hate that highway. All the twists and turns just drive me psycho by the end of the day. It is a beautiful drive I suppose. Mostly though I wouldn’t know about that because I have my eyes on the road all the time, going bonkers. Ah well.
I was not planning to go to this waterfall, actually. I wanted to go to a couple waterfalls upstream from this one. Yes there is indeed an Upper Salmon Creek Falls. However things did not turn out as planned of course. Firstly, Tara’s knee was on the fritz again from the hike the previous day. I wanted her to come with me on this hike, but she could not. She insisted it was ok for her to wait in the car while I hiked. I hesitated. But she insisted again. And again. Well, ok then … I started up the trail but I did not get very far. The trail seemed to be going in completely the wrong direction from my map, up and far away from the creek. This could not possibly be the right way! I went back and tried a different route, going up beside the top of the lower falls, however that route eventually just fizzled out and it got too difficult to continue. Well I did not feel right about going on a very long hike anyway so I just went back and photographed this lower falls again. As I found out later, the first route was the correct one after all, but my map was wrong. It was completely my fault. Ugh. I will know better next time! If I can brave that crazy drive one more time, that is.
Since we were all the way down the coast we continued further down to Hearst Castle, a place I had never been to before. It definitely was a very interesting place, and I do recommend going if you have not been there. It was an extremely hot day; it is supposed to be winter, but it felt like summer. It was totally nuts. Up at the castle, however (1000 ft. higher in elevation), it was very chilly (and of course I left my jacket back in the car, brilliant!). I was hoping to see one of the zebras that run freely on their land, but instead we saw some of the very interesting aoudads (barbary sheep). The dumb bus driver only stopped for a grand total of three seconds to let us see them (and try to photograph them in that time). Geez is it really that important to keep to your stupid timing schedule so Alex Trebec doesn’t get off track on your useless voice audio (if you have been there, you know what I am talking about). I did get a somewhat ok kinda crappy photo of one of them in those three seconds. If you would like to see it click here.
My wife and I headed over to the coast for the weekend, sans kids, to celebrate our birthdays this month. Both of our happy days are at the end of January (well as happy as you can be at my age). My wife loves the ocean and beach, and I was hoping to see some waterfalls of course. The bad news though is that it has not rained in January. Why is it that whenever I plan a big waterfall vacation to the CA coast, I always pick dry times of the year! It happened last year and the year before as well. It was going to be interesting to see if the falls were all completely dry or not, I did not have my hopes too high.
We arrived very early at this waterfall, called Andrew Molera Falls after the state park that it is in. It is very easy to get to but I had never been here before so thus I was anxious to remedy this silly faux pas.
Andrew Molera Falls is an ugly waterfall. Seriously. There are fallen logs all over the place at this waterfall. I can think of other waterfalls where fallen logs across the falls actually enhance the waterfall’s beauty and character (Russian Gulch Falls, Lion Slide Falls). But the fallen logs across Andrew Molera Falls do no such thing. Ah well, what can you do? Well, you can look for alternative viewpoints. And that is what I did. My wife stayed at the overlook while I scally wagged down the hill to the creek, crossed it, then made my way up and around fallen logs, and down to the base of the falls. Whew. Once down I realized I would have to get my feet wet, getting into the creek and climbing up a mini cascade where I could get the view point I wanted. My wife, watching me from afar, said I looked like a hobbit with bare feet and rolled up pants, scampering in the creek. It was fun though and pretty cool standing under the fallen logs and looking up at the 35 ft. high waterfall. Did I make this ugly waterfall look pretty? You be the judge.
As for the flow … well it was not dry! It was actually flowing better than I expected and it was the same thing at our next stop (Pfeiffer Falls). So this gave me some hope for the rest of the weekend.
The one bad thing that happened here though? Tara somehow picked up a tick while sitting here waiting for me. She did not notice the thing biting her until the next day and it was bad by then. I don’t understand how she could not notice a tick biting her that long but this was the only possible place she could have picked it up. When we got home she went to see the doctor and is on antibiotics to be on the safe side and we pray this will keep her from getting any nasty disease. Other than this (oh and the hotel reservation mess up – sigh) we had a great time at the coast.
Just a short distance above stunning McWay Falls lies a lovely little tiered waterfall which I call Upper McWay Falls. It is fairly easy to get to and flows on the same creek as the lower McWay Falls. In other words, it also flows year-round.
After shooting McWay Falls at sunrise, I took the short hike up to the upper falls. It is an easy hike to the bottom of the 3 tiered waterfall, but it is a bit tricky scrambling up to the upper tier, which is the prettiest section. It drops 32 ft. into a hidden alcove. It reminds me a lot of Hole In The Wall Falls in the Columbia River Gorge, Oregon because of how it curves around inside the alcove. I spent quite a lot of time here shooting this one, and I may or may not have removed a lot of ugly logs and debris that may or may not have been at the base of the waterfall. I can’t really remember. Photographers have a very short memory when it comes to things like that.
Anyhow, it was a fun morning. I grabbed some coffee in Big Sur on my way back to Monterey to meet my family, and we spent the rest of the day enjoying the beach, playgrounds, and touring the Carmel mission (which was quite interesting), and then enjoying a big pizza dinner, followed by a walk on the fisherman’s wharf where we saw a cute baby sea otter from up close.
