Leon Turnbull Photography

(as opposed to Beer and Whiskey)

Here is one more brand new discovery for ya. That’s two in one weekend (I am referring to MLK weekend, and in case you are wondering why this post is a week late, don’t – haha). Not too shabby anyway. This falls is in Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. Surprise. I bet you thought there were no other waterfalls at Whiskeytown, didn’t you? Wait, didn’t I just say that same thing in my last post?

A big huge storm rolled in on Sunday so that day was pretty much shot for hiking. By Monday morning the storm was done and I headed out, up to Whiskeytown for what should have been a fairly short hike. It never works out that way with the waterfall madman. You should know that by now.

The hike started out very pleasant. The weather was about perfect, following on the heels of the latest of the storms, the sun trying to break through the clouds. The trail led across a major stream (which I had to wade across – it was freezing cold but my feet were toasty in my wet socks), then it climbed up and up alongside the stream. The sound of the fast rushing creek was music to my drought stricken ears, and I’m sure that is what put me in such a good mood. Then the trail ended. Well so much for my pleasant hike. The route was very overgrown as I headed down down and down. Eventually the terrain just became too steep to continue, surprisingly too steep. I had to give up on that effort this time, but all was not done for my day just yet.

Remember a few years ago when a ranger “discovered” Whiskeytown Falls? It was a major news item, international news in fact. But why? What is the big deal about finding a new waterfall? How many waterfalls have I discovered in the last few years? Lots! And how many of them made big news? None! And here is a brand-new one in the same park! Will it make international news? Of course not. Well this one is not as spectacular as Whiskeytown Falls of course, but it is a really nice one nonetheless.

And there are other undiscovered waterfalls at Whiskeytown as well, I am sure of that. After my first hike failed, I decided to explore this other Creek, which is actually quite a major Creek, though it is unnamed. There was, unfortunately, quite a lot of poison oak, but I made my way down to the creek, and worked my way up stream. In short order I could see a waterfall. I had to go through a lot of oak, crawl over a huge log, and carefully make my way up along the steep side of the creek bed. I finally arrived at the falls. It is a pretty one, 36 feet high. I guess you could say that it is unfortunate that log is cutting off the top of it, but on the other hand, I think the log gives quite a bit of character to the waterfall (kinda like Lion Slide Falls, for example). So it’s not too bad at all. I would have liked to explore more, but I was poison oaked out, not to mention quite tired.

As I hiked back up the trail, I came across a deer coming down towards me. It saw me clearly, but instead of running away like deer usually do, it kept coming for me, straight for me. It totally freaked me out. What did it think it was doing? I am a human! We kill deer and eat them for breakfast! Well, not me personally. I even backed off a bit, to give it more space to pass me, otherwise it would’ve passed within a couple feet of me. It came to within less than 10 feet of me, then decided to go off the path and up into the woods away from me. Whoa that was crazy. First killer cows, and now killer deer? What is the world coming to?

Well I didn’t have to spend Christmas alone at home like I did Thanksgiving, when I was laid out on my back all weekend. I thought it might happen, as my back was still not healed and driving up north had me concerned. It was going to be a painful trip. How on earth could I even think about hiking? But I WAS thinking about hiking. Heck, even if it was just an easy little one, I was emphatic that I would go hiking this weekend.

I went to Potem Falls first. That was certainly easy enough. Potem Falls was flowing ok, definitely not great, and it was easy enough to cross the stream, but nonetheless it was flowing better than I expected it to be. I will share that photo soon enough.

There is another waterfall near Potem that I have had my eye on for quite awhile. Bear Canyon Falls. Apparently it is only accessible by boat from Lake Shasta. But I was determined to get to it by land. And so I did. It was not exactly what I would call a hard hike … if I had a working back. However, it was harder than I wanted to do, all things considered, and it put my back to the strain. But I came out of it none the worse for wear and that was all I wanted. I did not want to make my back any worse than it was to begin with.

Like I said, it was not a particularly hard hike. However, there is no trail, there is poison oak, there are ticks, and at the end a very steep descent down to the creek. Well that is only partly true. There was only one tick. But that is because it was so darn cold out. And there was a trail. Actually there were two trails down Bear Canyon. They were human trails too, but they were very very old trails, and very very overgrown. They seemed to follow the canyon all the way down to the lake. I was able to follow them for the most part, but it was a challenge. How long ago did these trails see any usage? Years and years and decades and decades no doubt.

I made it down to a cliffy section and I could see where the waterfall was. Now how to get down this cliff to the creek? I found a path and carefully made my descent. It was not too hard, but there was quite a bit of oak to navigate through. Once down at the creek, I had to cross it to get any sort of view of the waterfall. I guess you could say the waterfall was BEARLY flowing. Haha, get it? Actually it was flowing not too bad though it would be very interesting to see it in high water. Nonetheless it is a highly intriguing waterfall, and highly challenging to view or photograph it. It drops through and under some huge rocks hanging over the creek in two segments, and it seems almost as if the waterfall falls underground. It is very dark under those rocks, and you cannot get up close to it or get a complete view of the falls. This is why I chose such a tight and zoomed in composition for my photograph. I think this best shows some of the intriguing-ness that I am talking about. It was a very nice hike to a very interesting little waterfall.

After work on Wednesday I drove up north to visit the in-laws for the weekend. I wanted to hike not only on Black Friday (as I do every year), but also on Thanksgiving Day. Just like Walmart, I am now expanding into the previous day to maximize my profits – in my case, it is waterfall viewing profits, not monetary profits. I did not have a lot of time on Thursday morning. I had to be in Redding by 10:30AM for Thanksgiving lunch/dinner. Who eats lunch at 10:30AM? Only my family of course.

Anyway, I chose to go to Montgomery Creek, just east of Redding, and was hoping to find at least one new waterfall out in that area. First problem I realized after I arrived at the in-laws on Wednesday evening, and it was a disaster. I left my GPS back home. Oh crikey. My GPS is my life-blood. It is absolutely essential for finding new waterfalls. With my GPS, I can get to a lot of places that are well off the beaten path, through forest and brush without any trails to lead me. But without it, I will likely have too much trouble just finding the trailhead, let alone avoid getting completely lost.

Oh what to do, what to do. Awhile back, I bought an iPhone topo map app. I only used it once to try it out, and I did not like it. My handheld GPS is just far superior to any iPhone app in every conceivable way. Well, I dusted it off (fortunately I had not deleted it), and downloaded some topo maps of the Montgomery Creek area before I left the house on Thursday morning. Hopefully with this app, I could find the trailhead, as well as get down to the waterfall.

I had another problem as well, and this was even worse than no GPS. I left my camera’s memory cards back at home as well. I only had a single 1GB card with me. This would not allow me to take very many photos. I would have to be very judicious about what photos I took over the course of the next two days.

My goal was to get down into Bear Canyon and find the waterfall on this creek dumping into Shasta Lake. I was able to find the spot where I thought I needed to start hiking, and made the descent into the canyon with my dumb little iPhone app. There was much brush and much poison oak, and once I got down into the canyon I got turned around and could not tell which way to go. Oh how I would have loved my handheld GPS! To make things worse, the terrain down there was very confusing anyway, and I was definitely afraid of getting lost. At one point the creek was on my right, and then all of a sudden it seemed to be on my left and going the opposite direction. I did manage to figure out what was going on with the terrain, but I realized it was just too brushy to get down to the waterfall. Even if I had my GPS, I could not have done it. This was not the right spot to go down. Strike out.

I got back to my car, and then went on to Potem Falls, just a short distance away. Unfortunately, by the time I arrived at Potem Falls, it was already in the sun. Potem gets the sun very early in the morning. I should have known this. I should have gone to Potem first, then try Bear Canyon afterwards. On the plus side, Potem Falls was really rocking, thanks to the recent rains. The flow was above average, and there was a lot of mist at the bottom of the falls. It was spectacular. I am not happy with the photo, due to the sun on the falls, but here it is for you anyway.

On the way back to Redding, I also found a better way down into Bear Canyon, which hopefully would allow me to get down to the waterfall there. Would I try it again the next day? Or go somewhere else? Stay tuned to find out.

I got out hiking three times over the long Thanksgiving weekend. I struck out wildly on Thursday and Friday in my search for new waterfalls. By Sunday, I was in desperate need of getting to at least some new waterfall. But it had to be an easy one.

I will talk more later about my Thursday and Friday strike outs. I have at least one photo to share from those outings. But for now I wanted to share this photo from Sunday morning first. Because by golly this is a pretty little waterfall, though it is a small one.

The reason for the easy hike on Sunday is because I was hiking with my dog all weekend. She is very old. She is a gamer and goes where-ever, but I think I pushed her a little too hard on Thursday and Friday, unintentionally of course, but that is what happens to me when I go waterfall hunting. Things are never as easy as I plan or expect. So for Sunday, I needed an easy hike, and even as such, this turned out to be a bit harder than I expected. I was also hoping my son would join me on this hike, but he opted out, stating lack of appropriate hiking gear available to him up at Nana and Papa’s house.

It is less than a mile hike over to Waters Gulch in Shasta Trinity National Forest, a small stream dumping into Lake Shasta. I had heard there was a waterfall on this creek, and I was hoping it was flowing well, since the other creeks in the area seemed to be going at a good clip, thanks to recent rain in the past week. Actually I was just hoping I could get to it and photograph it.

I found the waterfall all right, and it was easy enough to get down to the bottom of it, and easy for Kaya as well. It was smaller than I anticipated, though its actual height will depend on how it is measured. I have not decided if I should count the upper tier as part of the waterfall’s height or not (oh, the complications). Anyway, the bottom tier is the prettiest, and is shown here. The waterfall flow was much lower than I hoped. I think at high flow, this would be a really nice one overall, but not so much at lower flows. A local cougar apparently likes dining here also. I found an old bone and what was left over of some small animal beside the waterfall. Hmmm. Thankfully, the cougar was not waiting around to catch unsuspecting waterfall hunters.

After shooting the lower falls, I wanted to photograph the upper tier as well, and that meant climbing up to the top of this lower waterfall. Easy enough for me, but not so easy for Kaya. In her youth, she could bound up the rocks easily. But in her old age, she cannot. I lifted her up two big rock steps to get her to the top. However, once we got to the top, it suddenly occurred to me that I would not be able to get her back down the waterfall. There is no way she would let me carry her down. Phooey. I looked around in a moment of panic for an alternate exit. I found one. There was a path up the steep bank back up to the main trail. Through poison oak. I think I would have much preferred going back the same way, but for Kaya’s sake we went up through the oak instead. We made it safely and hopefully without the itch. It was a nice easy morning at Lake Shasta.

First off, I must apologize to friend and fellow photographer Eric Leslie, who just posted his own photograph of this small waterfall on Brandy Creek, near Redding. I don’t mean to intrude on his fanfare, and I also really think his photo is much better than mine. You can see his photo here. I never bothered to process my photo from this location because at the time, I did not like it. However, after seeing his shot, I looked back in my archives and seeing as I had nothing else to post anyway, I decided to give it a go.

This was taken on the weekend after Thanksgiving of last year (2011). I came here with another photographer, Brian Rueb, and we were looking for a much larger waterfall on Brandy Creek. I am sure there are bigger waterfalls on this creek, but as of yet, I have not found any. We just came across this very small waterfall. It is a steep descent down to the creek at this spot, requiring a lot of scrambling around, and if I recall, poison oak as well. Brian did not even bother taking out his camera for this small waterfall, and I just took a quick shot myself, balancing myself on a rock in the middle of the creek. Afterwards, we went over to Crystal Creek Falls on the other side of Whiskeytown Lake. I think one of the main reasons I never bothered processing it was because I was disappointed in its size, hoping to find a much bigger waterfall than this. Now, a year later, I kinda like it. Go figure.