Leon Turnbull Photography

Another 2 inches of rain on Thursday/Friday, and that means Saturday is a waterfall day. Of course on Friday night I have to get sick. Our whole family is in the dumpsters now. I caught my wife’s bad cold (as did my two kids), and I slept awful on Friday night. Well, I could not let that deter me. If it was not a waterfall day, I surely would have slept in, but we have had so precious few of these days in the past 14 months, I had to get out even if I was puking every half mile. Fortunately, that was not the case. It was just a cold. Of course, I feel worse on Sunday because of it, but that is besides the point.

Another place I have not been to in a long while because of the drought: Table Mountain. In a normal winter, I come here multiple times. There are still places I have not explored here. I did come here once last year, but I cannot even count that time, because the flow was very low, and we only went to Phantom Falls, which was just barely a trickle. This weekend would be a different story. All the waterfalls would be flowing quite well, and they were indeed. It has been so long, and I am so grateful to God for the rain we have had in February – and yet we need so much more. This last little bit of rain pushed Folsom Lake up to 32 percent from 30 percent capacity. It will probably go a point or two higher from the runoff over the course of this week, but average capacity at this time of year is 55 percent. We are all praying for a miracle in March.

My plan of action was to go to Phantom Falls, Flag Falls, and beyond. First up, however, was Hollow Falls and Lower Hollow Falls (aka Catamount Falls). I had never been to the lower falls there before, though it is a very easy hike. Normally I leave Hollow Falls to the end, after my main hike, and by that time it is sunny out and pointless to go down to Hollow Falls. This time I decided to go to Hollow Falls first. A wise decision, madman. The lower falls is a really nice looking 45 ft. high cascade. That one is on a different stream with a very small drainage, and I was happy to see it flowing well. Hollow Falls was rocking. All in all a very good sign. I will be sharing all these other photos soon.

After this it was off to Phantom Falls. The sun was trying to come through, and I thought it would break before I got to Phantom Falls. Thankfully, however, the clouds rolled back in, and we got a couple more showers before the end of the hike, so I was worried about the sun for nothing. I have seen Phantom Falls at bigger flows before, but it was still flowing quite strong, and looking good today.

I crossed the stream at the top of Phantom Falls and continued on to Flag Falls. Why, you ask? I have been to Flag Falls before. Why would I want to go back there? It is such a long hike out that way. Well, I did not actually want to go to Flag Falls, but I wanted to go beyond it. There are a couple other waterfalls out that way on very small drainage streams. One of them looked like it was actually a very good size. However, you cannot see them! I could only get a glimpse of the first one, the very top of the waterfall, before the trees obscured it completely from view. If there were no trees there, it would be a great looking waterfall. The other one I could not see at all. This was such a bummer! They would have been awesome new finds. Someone needs to go cut down those trees beside that waterfall. It would require someone to repel down the cliff, however. Any takers? Ha ha, I’m just kidding of course.

Anyway, after this I did not dawdle. I wanted to get back to Hidden Falls quickly. It is a bit freaky way out that far past Phantom Falls. I’m not kidding. When you continue past Hidden Falls on the way to Flag Falls, there is an area that is somewhat wooded, lots of trees, lots of places for mountain lions to hide. There are a ton of cattle bones around this area. They were scattered all over, I am not kidding. In other words, it is a high activity area for mountain lions, and I was very wary, looking constantly about me. It is a freaky place. Then I saw a big animal off in the distance. I looked closer, and saw it was a coyote! Well, that is much better than seeing a mountain lion. When it saw me, it took off. I think I got video of it, but it was a bit far away, so I’m not sure. Anyway, I got out of the wooded area, crossed over the stream at the top of Hidden Falls, had my lunch at the falls viewpoint there, at which point it started raining again, making for a wet lunch, then I made the long slow journey back to the car. It was certainly a great day on Table Mountain.

With my wife and daughter in San Francisco this weekend for Nekoda’s dance seminar, I had Jadon with me at home. I was not really wanting to go out on a hike, but in the end decided to take him on an easy one up to Colfax. I made a bad choice though on the destination, Bear Falls.

My mistake was in thinking this was a natural waterfall, and thus it should have somewhat decent flow after the recent rains. When I was here in August it was flowing better than this. It seemed to me at that time that it was a natural waterfall and the creek flowed under the canal above it. Wrong. Upon further investigation, I now realize it is man-made, and the flow comes FROM the canal. And thus, even though it had rained recently, there was no flow coming out of the canal, resulting in a lame waterfall.

Ah well, at least I had a nice morning hike with Jadon. Afterwards, we went to Mormon Island at Folsom Lake. That was rather interesting, and even though the lake had risen 10 percent from the last storm, I was surprised to find it still accessible. That may change soon. It seems like we may be getting another big storm next week. Thank God for this! I will certainly be looking forward to hiking next weekend to a non-lame waterfall. Finally!

I did really want to see Bear Falls, however, at decent flow. Another time I guess.

Another adventure. And a surprise waterfall found. Not bad for a quick morning hike.

I was totally off road on Saturday morning’s hike, looking for a new waterfall near Devil’s Falls in Colfax. I thought there might be a good sized waterfall in New York Canyon (not THE New York Canyon, a different New York Canyon). The path I took down to the creek was surprisingly easy. I expected to be bushwhacking through ticks and poison oak, but instead I found a decent path that obviously had been traveled before. That in itself is very odd considering how remote this place is, and that there is pretty much no parking at all on the very narrow and steep Shirttail Canyon Rd.

However, I soon found out it is not so remote after all. Once down at the creek I found a road! And a camper! I was pretty shocked to find these things down here. I think it actually might be private property, but of course there was no one around, and thus I continued on.

I had to make my way up Refuge Canyon in order to get to New York Canyon. It started off pretty easy until I got to the waterfall. I was certainly not expecting to find this waterfall in Refuge Canyon. I like these kind of surprises! It is about 20 ft. high in total height, not a bad little surprise indeed.

Getting up close to it was impossible, however. The canyon walls got very narrow and steep here. I could not continue. I tried to climb up the side of the cliff, I came very close, but I just could not quite do it. It was just a little steep, and one slip and I would have been in big trouble, sliding down the cliff into the creek. So bummed, I started to make my way back, still looking for a way up. Finally, I found a path going up to the top. It was filled with poison oak, but it was actually a decent trail and once up on top, the trail continued high along the creek.

When I got to the top of the waterfall, I made my way down to a viewpoint. It was difficult to photograph the falls from here, as there was no clean view. The cliff was scary steep and I did not want to tempt fate by getting closer. There were also a million ladybugs here. I tried not to disturb them but they were all over my backpack as soon as I put it down. Crazy-ness.

The trail continued all the way to New York Canyon where I expected to find a much bigger waterfall. Unfortunately, all I found there was a small 12 footer. It was kind of nice though, so I took a photo. As I was taking my photos, I happened to glimpse something coming down out of a tree in the distance. It was a bit far away and I only got a glimpse but I think it might have been a mountain lion. I suppose it could have been a squirrel. How on earth could I mistake a squirrel for a mountain lion, you ask? Well, yeah, I don’t know. All I can really say is it seemed a lot bigger than a squirrel. I did not wait to find out. I packed up my bag and got the heck out of there. Holy molies.

Waterfall Madman Episode 5 is now here. Watch in HD if you can.

Well last Thursday when I realized that the Pineapple Express was powering its juice in to northern California, and we were going to be getting 7 inches of rain, I knew that the waterfalls would be roaring. Monday looked like it was going to be the best waterfall day, so I promptly asked my boss for Monday off. I was set to rock and roll. Now we just needed the rain. And it came.

We actually received 12 inches of rain in the foothills. Folsom Lake rose from 17 percent to about 27 percent capacity, and we are still getting runoff from this storm and will be throughout the week. And don’t forget the five feet of snow that fell in the mountains, which will be coming down eventually. Of course we still need much more rain but it is not quite the bleak sham that the media has been reporting the last couple days.

On Sunday the North Fork American River was up to 10,000 cubic feet per second, and that means ALL the waterfalls would be flowing awesomely. On Monday morning I was off to see one of my favorites, 134 ft. high Canyon Creek Falls. The river flow was down to about 6000 cfs, which was about the same flow as when I visited it in Dec 2012. One of these days I want to see this waterfall at monster flow, but I’m still waiting for that chance.

When I left the house, it was raining and foggy. You may remember when I visited this waterfall last time, I experienced a small miracle. It was raining, foggy, and windy and as I hiked down to the waterfall that day, I did not even think I would get to see it because of the fog, or photograph it at all. So I prayed to God to stop the rain, fog, and wind, and as soon as I got to the waterfall viewpoint, all three were gone: no rain, no fog, no wind. It was certainly a miracle and blessing from God. Well it looked like the same thing might happen again this year. However, this year I DID NOT ask God to stop the rain. We need every ounce of rain we can get this year, and I really would not mind if it was raining when I got there. I did ask Him to take the fog away though, because it would really suck to hike all the way down there and not be able to see anything at all!

I arrived at the trailhead and found another car parked in my spot. It had Minnesota plates, which was strange. What person from Minnesota would be out here hiking to this waterfall so darn early in the morning! There is only one parking spot at the trailhead, so I had to drive a bit further back up the road. As I came back down to that car, I was video-taping with my Go Pro camera. When I got to the car, I stopped and was making commentary for my video, saying things like, you know, why are they parked in my spot, who would be crazy enough to be out here so early in the morning, that kind of thing. Ok well after doing that, I continued on down the trail. After only a short distance, I realized I forgot my umbrella back at the car, so… I decided to go back to get it because it was “supposed” to rain some more that morning. I got back to the car, and lo and behold, there was a man getting out of the car, and getting ready to hike. He was sleeping in the car! And I must have woken him with my crazy commentary! Oh my gosh. I apologized to him for waking him. He was very cool about it though, saying that he needed to get up anyway. He was an old miner dude who had a claim down by the river, and he was going down there to pan for some gold. Geez, talk about embarrassing. I had no idea anyone was sleeping in the car!

Well anyway, la la la, off I went down to the waterfall again. Well this year as I hiked down to the waterfall viewpoint, there was no rain. There was no wind. There was also no fog. I guess all of that is good stuff, except that the sun had come out! It was not supposed to be out until around noon, certainly not this early in the morning! If I had thought the sun would be out, I would have started my hike much sooner than I did, and it looked like the sun was shining right down in the canyon, right on the waterfall. So I prayed again, this time: please God, don’t let the sun be shining on the waterfall. Well I got to the waterfall viewpoint, the falls was thundering down the canyon, much the same as last time. It is an incredible waterfall, and the view is spectacular, with the thundering waterfall on one side, and the raging river on the other side. The sun was not exactly quite shining on the waterfall, but it was almost on it. However, the viewpoint was all in sun, and that made photographing the falls from there very difficult. I continued further down the trail looking for a different viewpoint that was not in the sun. All I found was poison oak. And a lot of it. You can continue quite a ways, perhaps getting all the way down to the bottom, but it seemed far too brushy to try it. I came back to the main viewpoint and stopped again before I headed back up the hill. Enter stage right: thick clouds covering up the sun. Sweet goodness! The clouds made the lighting much more pleasant, and I was actually able to take some decent photos of the waterfall. Once again, God answered my prayer here. He is surely awesome. And so is this waterfall.

Finally! It is raining! Woo hoo! The waterfall madman is a happy camper! At least for one weekend, anyway. Praise God for the rain, seriously. This weekend is the FIRST major storm we have had in 14 months. We have had a few small storms, but I don’t think we had anything in which we received over 2 feet of snow in the last 14 months. That is incredibly awful. Usually in every month of winter we get at least one if not more of these big storms. But we have one this weekend finally. Over six inches of rain is expected in the foothills, and up to 5 or 6 feet of snow in the mountains. Now that’s what I am talking about, but we really need so much more still, so keep praying.

Anyway, Saturday rolled around and rain or not, you know I am going to get out there. In fact, I love the rain. Bring it on! And it did come on!

But where should I go? I really had no good idea. I finally decided on going to Nevada City and Kenebec Creek Falls. I have been there before, but there are some other potential new waterfalls in the same area that I wanted to check out. I thought I would go to Kenebec first, then hit some of the new ones.

Well, it rained steadily the whole day. The lady at the gas station in Nevada City told me to stay dry. I told her I had plans to get very wet. I am not sure she believed me. But I sure did get wet. In fact, I would not have been more wet if I had swam across the South Yuba River in all my clothes! The rain also makes it quite difficult for photography. But I did not complain! No way, Jose. I am just so happy to see all this rain this weekend. Anyway, I had an umbrella and tried to manage to keep it over my camera while I took the photos. It worked all right.

Kenebec Creek Falls was not really flowing all that great. It is a very small creek, but I have seen it much better. Indeed, it probably will be much much better Sunday or Monday, and although I do plan to go out hiking again this weekend, it won’t be back to Kenebec. I had hoped though, that it would have more flow than it did. It probably rained about an inch or so in the area on Friday. It needs a lot more.

After shooting Kenebec Creek Falls,  I went over to the unnamed waterfall beside Kenebec. I was at this one before when it was flowing much better. I should have photographed it then. Today it was not quite flowing too well, but I took a photo anyway. Then I did something a bit crazy. I went for an additional 5 mile hike in the rain. By the time I was all done, I was a drenched rat. Literally. Everything was completely soaked through, including my waterproof boots and waterproof gloves. I followed the South Yuba trail over to North Canyon. I thought there “might be” a waterfall there, and I wanted to check it out. I figured I should do it now, because who knows when I will be back this way. Well, I did not quite find a waterfall. But oh it was oh so close. I found a little cascade, and it was close to 20 feet high (my lower limit) and perhaps was, but it just was not quite interesting enough. It was just a small cascade, but the biggest problem was it was not clean, there were just too many branches obstructing the view of it. It was not worthy. And that was just sad.

It was a long hike out there for nothing, and by the time I got back to the car, I was far too wet to try going anywhere else. The other ones will have to wait for another day, but at least I got one decent waterfall to see at Kenebec Creek. It was a fun and very wet day.

Here is the next Waterfall Madman episode. Please check it out!