Leon Turnbull Photography

It was only two weeks ago everyone was exclaiming STAY HOME and shaming anyone who wanted to go out hiking (even though it was allowed). Now it is the complete opposite: EVERYONE is going out hiking, even people who do not normally hike. I don’t blame them for wanting to go out hiking, but seriously people, absolutely nothing has changed in two weeks to warrant this drastic turnabout. The only thing that has changed is the weather. Problem is, all the parks are still closed. Thus the trails that are open are overly crowded, much more so than usual for this time of year (Bassi Falls, Horsetail Falls, Feather Falls, to name a few), and people are trashing all these places horribly, leaving their litter behind. Whatever happened to Leave No Trace, people? Traverse Creek Falls is now closed off because of this: over popularity of this location as a direct result of people posting on a certain Facebook group (I’m not naming it). Now no one can go there anymore because of these idiots. Most true hikers are respectful (and probably everyone reading this), but there are just far too many who have no respect for nature. I’ve said it before: these people have no right to be out hiking whatsoever.

When I go hiking I want to go to places where most people do not go. I have been to all these other popular places many times. Especially right now, I want to go hiking in places where there won’t be anyone and I will have the trail all to myself. Enter Loch Leven Lakes. This is a trail that is not popular, there definitely won’t be anyone there. So I thought. However, when I arrived at the trailhead at 7:30AM, there were already a bunch of cars in the parking lot, and a big group was just heading out. What the heck? There should not be anyone here! Especially this early! This is NOT NORMAL.

My plan was for a big two night trip down to the North Fork American River. It did not turn out that way.  There was still quite a bit of snow up at the lakes, and worse: along the trail going up to the lakes. I knew there would be snow of course. There was about 3-4 feet of snow on the trail, and 2-3 feet up at the lakes. It was perhaps a little more than I expected, but it is close to what I thought it would be. I was prepared for it, and I had my microspikes as well. Not so for the multitudes of other people on the trail. Everyone I talked to on the trail was shocked that there was snow, even though you can clearly see from the trailhead that there is a lot of snow up on top. What is that white stuff up there, darling? Duh, I don’t know, honey.  Pretty much everyone turned back well before the top. I even saw a couple backpackers who were camped right along the trail because they could not make it up through the snow. I only saw two other people up at the lakes. It was very tough going. It took a full 3 hours to hike 3.5 miles up to the top and far end of the lakes (where I camped). The snow was soft and there was a great danger of postholing and seriously injuring yourself. Every step needs to be certain and secure. I sank in a few times, but mostly it was just grueling and slow.

My hope was to continue on the Big Granite trail down to the river. Finding the trail in the snow was completely impossible. Even as I descended and left the snow behind, I still could not find any semblance of trail. It was overgrown, brushy, and non-existent. I could not have been prepared for this, and was not expecting it to be this bad. It was getting late now and I had to give up. A full blown bushwhack of 6 miles in length was not going to work. I returned to the lakes and setup camp there. It was a nice little campsite at the end of the lake. The bad news is that there were flies. Little flies that bite (and it really hurt too). Somehow about 50 flies got in my tent even though the zipper was all closed. I found only one small hole in my tent. Did all these flies get in through that little hole? That seems a bit ridiculous but how else did they get in? That was the bad news. The good news is that there were a couple small waterfalls here, which I did not know about before. Not really very exciting but certainly much better than nothing. This is the biggest of the cascades, about 30 ft. high. It was a small consolation for my trip cut too short in the Tahoe National Forest.

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This stream is not even marked on any of my maps at all. When I was here in the winter, this waterfall did not exist. But in the spring, here I find this drop dead gorgeous waterfall. I was delighted.

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I had a very rude awakening by the jeepers. They were driving around the reservoir in the middle of the night (very loudly), and they decided they would drive through my camping area right beside my tent! There is no road here! They knew I was there also, because it was the same group of which I picked up their trash earlier. I found this extremely annoying and disrespectful.

Needless to say, I got very little sleep. Nonetheless, I wanted to get up very early, at 5AM to be precise. Are you crazy, madman? Well, it is because I wanted to attempt to find a new waterfall and get there before the sun got on it. I packed up camp, had a quick breakfast, and headed out at 6AM.

I really did not think I was going to make it. My planned route I determined that looked best on Google Earth took me to the edge of a cliff with no way down. I did not see this cliff on Google Earth! After a couple other tries and a lot of scrambling around through brush, I finally found a way around the cliff. I was very tired from all the scrambling around, and it was getting late. I still thought I was going to get cliffed out again, but I continued down the creekside and finally came out at the bottom. I was not cliffed out! I got all the way down to the reservoir and to the bottom of this gorgeous 70 ft. cascade. The light was still good. I was absolutely ecstatic! It was such a beautiful morning, and such a beautiful location and waterfall. This was my favorite waterfall of all the falls I saw this weekend. I love discovering brand new waterfalls!

It was easier climbing back up to the trail because I did not have scramble around the brush the same way that I came down. I took a big break to rest. From here it was a 3 mile hike back to my car. It was hot and slow going but I made it back to my car by 10:30AM. Except for the disrespectful jeepers, it was an amazing springtime adventure into the Hell Hole.

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Life has been too stressful. Getting out on a backpacking trip this weekend was an essential activity for me. It is still early season, most areas are still snowed in, and those that aren’t snowed in are closed because of the virus, so picking the right place to go is a difficult task. I chose to go back to the Hell Hole.

I have been to all the waterfalls on Grayhorse Creek before, but it was at low flow. I’ve been wanting to go back at high flow for a long time. I would just camp along Grayhorse Creek and go up to see all the waterfalls in the evening. A quick trip, but a good one.

It is a short hike to Grayhorse Creek; I arrived about noon and setup camp on this side of the creek. The views from here are magnificent. Since I had so much time before I needed to go up to the waterfalls, I decided to hike to the end of the reservoir in the afternoon. That meant I had to cross Grayhorse Creek. It was getting pretty close to peak flow for the year, and the creek was flowing very strong (Kyburz on the SFAR was at 1200cfs). I was not sure that I would be able to make it but I was able to cross at 1PM without any difficulty. The only problem I had was that my feet were frozen off by the time I got to the other side. The water was cold! It was a warm day, though, and they thawed out pretty quickly once I got out of the stream. I hiked along to the end of the reservoir and to Hell Hole Falls. I was hiking IN the reservoir, along the river. The reservoir is very low right now, and it is easy and pleasant to do this. The light was bad of course, so taking good pictures of Hell Hole Falls was not possible, but it was nice to do this hike, and the waterfall was flowing pretty good. I did not go up to Kada Falls because that requires crossing Five Lakes Creek, which would have been very difficult to do, and I did not want to take the time and effort to do that. I returned to camp.

Begin Rant …

The trail to Grayhorse Creek is a popular road with jeepers. Their machines are horribly loud and you can hear them for miles. I knew all this of course, so I cannot complain “too much” that there were jeeps down in the reservoir. Had I known there would be so many, however, I would have chosen a different place to camp. Are we not supposed to be under quarantine still? There were at least two large groups here, and they were absolutely NOT social distancing. On my way back to camp, I had to pick up their beer cans that they threw out in the middle of the reservoir. I know it was them because the cans were not there on my way out. A couple other things I noticed on my drive out to Hell Hole: At Stumpy Meadows reservoir, the boat ramp area is closed yet I saw at least 15 cars in there, and they had just pushed the closed sign out of the way. In the town of Georgetown, I saw at least 30 motor bikes, and the bikers were just hanging out and definitely not social distancing. These small towns don’t seem to care about the rules, their restaurants and non-essential stores are open, yet they do not want the rest of us going there. Georgetown is just one example I have seen (Tahoe, Mammoth Lakes). I have been responsible and following the rules. Recently, I have seen a couple people post their hikes in Lassen Volcanic NP (which is closed). So you can hike into Lassen by back roads and that is ok? No it is not. The park is completely closed. I could hike into Yosemite if I wanted to, in fact I have a great route that I really really want to do, and I am sure I would not see anyone in the park, but it is illegal to go there. The irresponsible people are ruining things for the rest of us.

End Rant …

Back at camp, I made my dinner, relaxed a bit, and then headed up the mountain. My first stop was (lower) Grayhorse Creek Falls. With the creek rushing so fast, it is impossible to cross and impossible to wade upstream. That means the only way down to the falls is via a very steep and cliffy traverse. Rope is a necessity. I anticipated this beforehand, and I brought my rope with me. Normally, I hate to bring rope on a backpacking trip, it is just too much extra weight; this time, however, I brought both my water shoes and rope, and I needed them both. I would not have gotten to this first waterfall without the rope. Even so, once I got up to the falls, I found a huge tree fallen in the creek, literally blocking half the waterfall from view. So I had to settle for a secondary view of the falls, on a scary ledge, and even this view was partially obscured by trees.

I continued upstream to the multitude of waterfalls. Waterfalls coming out of the ying yang. I even found a new one that was not there on my previous trip up the canyon. (picture coming later). As I hiked up the canyon I came across the local resident. He was following the stay at home order. A big, beautiful, brown-colored bear was standing on its hind legs, looking down on me. He was huge. As soon as I saw it, he scampered up the mountain away from me, too fast for me to get out my camera. Oh, how I wish I was prepared with my camera.

It was 6:45PM when I finally got to the uppermost waterfall. This was much later than I wanted, but there were just too many waterfalls to photograph! I was pretty sure that I had been up to this uppermost falls before (pictured above). I remember the little trail going to it, but when I looked back at my previous photos, I could not find a picture of this one. That is very strange, and I don’t remember what happened. Anyway, I took some photos this time. It was now 7PM, and I hurried back down the canyon. It is a long descent, and finally got back to camp just before dark.

I had a good night except for one big problem ….

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Recently, it seems, people are becoming more and more rude. Do you see this as well? Someone recently posted a photo of a waterfall and called it by an incorrect name, so I politely (very politely) corrected him, and he went ballistic on me. What the heck? Why would you be so angry about this? Remember the Bassi Falls winter photo? I posted it in a Facebook group, and I was called out by someone saying I should not post it because it is dangerous to go there in the winter! What? First of all, it’s not dangerous to go there. Secondly, who cares! Basically this person was saying no one can ever post any winter photos of any place ever!

Are you feeling too much fear because of the virus? You do not need to live in fear. God is in control of this. But even so, that is still absolutely no excuse to be so rude to other people. You may not be able to or you may not want to go hiking right now. That is your choice, but hiking is an essential activity, and if other people want to hike right now, that is their choice. There is nothing wrong with that, and it is not against any rules or orders. Do not be rude towards them, or show hate towards them. Please. Love, not hate.

This is Canyon Creek Falls #1, 42 ft. high.

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