This is Lower Pennyweight Falls in Colfax, 22 ft. high. I went here after work last week. With the flow in the creek so much reduced, it was pretty easy to rock hop across the creek and up to the falls. It certainly would be nicer with a bit more flow. However, it was still very nice, and I enjoyed my time and solitude at these falls on this particular evening.
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Saturday morning I ventured out on yet another incredibly crazy and difficult hike.
In a certain rafting book that I have, it mentions a “beautiful waterfall” in Blind Canyon on the Middle Fork American River. Rafting or kayaking is not my cup of tea, and so I have always wondered it was possible to hike to this waterfall instead of raft/kayak. I decided to find out. And the answer is yes. But it is certainly a very difficult hike.
It did not help that I went down the wrong way. Namely, straight down a cliff. You see, there is a mining road leading down to the river from Mosquito Rd near Foresthill. Unfortunately, it crosses private property. The last time I tried that a few years ago, I saw plenty of no trespassing signs indicating that you could not continue on the road. I do believe it is a public road, so I do not really understand how it can cross private property like this. Anyway, I needed to look for an alternate route, so I decided to park along Mosquito Rd and descend the ridge into the canyon. Unfortunately, it was very very steep, much steeper than I thought it would be. I had to be extremely slow and careful. It also seems like this is the place where everyone dumps their garbage over the cliff. I had to walk by a lot of trash, appliances, even a couple very old cars. Humph. I finally made it down to that mining road. From there, I just followed it down and then cut over on another trail over to Blind Canyon. This other trail was surprisingly well traveled. I was not expecting that due to the difficulty of the hike. There was also a lot of poison oak and ticks down near the bottom. Eck. And double eck. But on the bright side, there were some nice wildflowers along the trail too.
The waterfall turned out to be only a small one, 16 ft. high. I was hoping for something quite a lot bigger. But the book was right. It certainly was a very “beautiful” little falls, stair stepping down the rock. And I think it would be even more impressive with a lot more water flowing in the creek.
On the way back up, I decided to keep going straight back up the mining road all the way to the top, instead of trying to scale that cliff back up again. I was much too tired to try doing that. I was just hoping I would not run into anyone crossing over private property. However, I did not need to do that anyway. As I climbed up the road, I saw another “trail” on my map, leading up to Mosquito Rd. where my car was. It was overgrown, but it was much much easier than the cliff and it bypassed the private property as well. This was the way I should have gone down in the first place. Well, now I know for next time.
More info on Blind Canyon Falls:
http://www.waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=458
Here is another view of Dutch Creek Falls. For my sunset shot, I was standing up on the ledge in the middle, right beside the falls. It does not look like much of a ledge from this angle. It just looks steep. And I suppose it is. 🙂 For this shot, I was standing up on a big rock. It was steep also.
More:
http://waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=459
Well, since I struck out on my waterfall hike last weekend, and since this next weekend I will not be able to go out hiking at all (as my wife has a karate seminar), I was in a bit of a quandary. The waterfalls were rushing. How could I get out to see them? The solution I came up with … go out after work during the week. That meant I had to go someplace close by. Dutch Creek Falls was the decision, and it turned out to be a good one.
I got hold of my friend Rob at the last minute, and he was up for it. Cool. So at 5PM, we met up at Coloma ready to head out in the very hot weather on our hike.
Dutch Creek Falls is such an amazing place. Four fantastic waterfalls in one place, two of them being about 100 ft. high and falling side by side into a beautiful and rugged canyon, with steep dropoffs all around. I definitely would have to say that these are the best waterfalls in the greater Sacramento area. They do not flow in the summer, but in the winter it is a stunning location. And they are sure flowing right now. After an incredible March, we are now at 170 percent of normal snowpack. We are going to be in for one heckuva spring waterfall season.
Anyway, in short order Rob and I battled our way through the ticks up to the waterfall. I led the way, of course, swatting away hundreds of them with my hiking pole from the grasses hanging over the trail. Rob still owes me a beer for doing that. Once at the falls, we decided to go up to the top, and try to cross the creek above Johntown Creek Falls. Johntown Creek Falls was raging. How would we cross? Well, as it turned out it was not as difficult as I imagined it would be. The water was deep, up to my thighs, but it was calm enough to cross without difficulty. Rob had a little more trouble as he had to cross in his bare feet, and as he puts it, he is a “tender foot”. Fortunately, I brought my water shoes in anticipation of such a crossing. We worked our way down to Dutch Creek and Johntown Creek Falls on the other side, Rob going the mountain goat way (down the cliff), and I going the easier way (steep but less treacherous). Johntown was very misty so we just took a quick shot there, then went over to Dutch Creek and spent most of our time there, and eventually waiting around for sunset. There were some nice wispy clouds over the valley, and the sunset was absolutely gorgeous. It was amazingly beautiful, standing beside a fabulous waterfall, looking across the canyon at a gorgeous sunset.
After this, of course we had to hike back down. In the dark. We tried to hurry, crossing back above Johntown Falls. I did not want to climb down the cliff on the other side in the dark, but by the time we got there, it was already fairly dark. It was not really too bad though, as we both had headlamps. We walked pretty fast back to the car, and I think because of this I managed to wrench my back again. I was in severe pain the next day. I certainly do not recall doing anything in particular, it must just have been that I was hurrying too much and straining it on the hike back. We also almost got waylaid by a skunk on the way back, which was rather interesting. I was in the lead, and as I looked ahead I noticed a small black animal running up the trail ahead of us. I could not see any white on it. Was it a skunk? A racoon? maybe a house cat? (there were houses in the area). What was it? Rob decided to follow it into the bushes for some odd reason. Then all of a sudden he is yelling at me. “Leon run away! Run away! It is a skunk. And it has its tail up!”. Well, fortunately we managed to avoid getting sprayed. And we also managed to avoid getting tick bites as well. Now where is my beer, Mr. Macklin?
More info on Dutch Creek Falls:
http://waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=459
Now that I am working again, Saturday is essentially the only day of the week that I can go out waterfallin. So … I really wanted to get out this Saturday even though it was supposed to be raining. I did not sleep well on Friday night, and I really did not want to wake up on Saturday morning. In fact, I turned my alarm off, thinking that I would not get up. But at 5AM, I was up to use the bathroom, and I just decided to get up and go anyway. Oh, but I think I should have gone back to bed.
It was raining as I drove down the freeway to the Bay area, and that makes driving on the freeway more difficult (especially when everyone else seems to be going so much faster than is safe for the conditions). But as I got to Danville, it was not raining, in fact, it looked like the sun would come out. But I knew that would not last, with more rain coming that morning. My first stop was Las Trampas Regional Park, where I was looking for a certain waterfall there. I had the right co-ordinates, and I found the trail leading up to the falls, but all I found was a small 10 foot high waterfall. I was very disappointed, as I was expecting and hoping for something at least 20 ft. high. A 10 footer is not even worthy to put on my website. Then it started raining again. I felt like just driving back home and not going on to my second destination. But I had driven all the way out here, I figured it would be dumb to not go to the other waterfall.
My second destination was in Mt. Diablo State Park. Sycamore Creek Falls. The unknown waterfall in Mt. Diablo State Park. I think most everyone knows of the falls on Donner Creek, but very few know of this other one. I had actually tried to find this particular waterfall earlier this season, but the creek was completely dry at that time. It is a very small little creek. But today I knew it would be flowing. I arrived at the entrance kiosk, and talked to the lady there a bit. I told her I was going to hike down to Sycamore Creek. She asked me what was down there. I told her a waterfall. She was shocked! A waterfall! Are you kidding me? It seems that not even the park employees know about this waterfall. I told her that if I found it, I will stop on my way out and show her my pictures. I did that, and she was very pleased, saying that it looked like a great waterfall, even nicer than the ones on Donner Creek (I’m not sure about that myself, but it is certainly a very nice little waterfall).
The hike down to the falls was pretty easy. It was raining the entire time down and back. Rain makes it hard to take photographs, but I managed. The hard part was actually getting to the falls. Once you get down there, you need to go off the main trail, a steep descent down to the creek. It would not be difficult if the ground was dry, but with the rain, it was slippery and muddy, and that made for a treacherous descent down to the creek. Then I had to rock hop across the creek (which was not easy either, considering that the creek was flowing strong), then work my way up on the other side of the creek to the falls, through some bushes (and poison oak), then climb up on a slippery rock to get a view looking down at the falls (which was also tricky). Was it all worth it? Yes, I do think so. Despite the rain and difficult conditions, it was a pretty waterfall, and although I was sure tired afterwards, I did feel like I had a great outing on this Saturday morning.
More info on Sycamore Creek Falls:
http://waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=550