Leon Turnbull Photography

This is Alamere Falls from the cliffs. You don’t want to stand too close to the edge here.

As of Feb. 1, the snow pack is 77% of normal (northern CA), 71% (central Sierra), 69% (southern Sierra). Rainfall is 63% (north), 53% (central), 55% (south). Things are looking very bleak this year. I like to be optimistic, however. Optimistic that we will catch up in the last half of February and March, and get back to average by the end of winter. Pray for snow, everyone.

The photo is Upper Alamere Falls.

I was very warm during the night. I had to shed layers and did not use all the warm clothes I brought for sleeping (my pack could have been a lot less than 43 pounds). Nekoda was also warm, but Tara and Jadon were cold. I’m not really sure why Tara was cold, but I know why Jadon was cold: He is so stubborn, that is why. I bought him a $70 sleeping bag liner so he would be warm at night. He did not use it. (Nekoda used the one I bought for her and she was warm). Instead, he carried a heavy blanket in his pack! (that must have added 5 pounds to his pack on top of the 20.5 pounds I weighed). This did not keep him warm whatsoever. But would his father (who has much backpacking experience) know what would be best ? No, of course not. He has to do his own thing. As for hiking boots, I made him try on my old boots before the trip. He said they fit perfectly fine. When we got to the trailhead, he said they did not fit. So what did he do? He took out all the shoelaces from the boots and hiked in the boots with no shoelaces! Was that better? Of course not. For the hike back, I could have let him suffer more, but I gave him my trail shoes (which I happened to have along with me), and those fit him better. (but he then had to carry the heavy hiking boots in his pack). No wonder he struggled with his pack, carrying those extra (and unnecessary) heavy items. As for Nekoda, she had to bring along all her makeup on the hike. I wonder how much weight all those items added. Sigh. Teenagers.

We woke up to a beautiful sunrise and glorious morning. Tons of little birds swarmed around us as we ate our breakfast, looking for scraps and trying to steal my food as I sat at the picnic table. Tara and I walked down to the ocean and watched the huge waves while my daughter Nekoda struggled to get up and out of her warm sleeping bag (and it WAS a big struggle). I think it was 9:45am by the time we got going, and it was a 6 mile hike back to the trailhead.

We saw many hikers on the trail going to Alamere Falls. I thought it was funny because many of them missed the turnoff to the waterfall. It is not marked, and if you miss it, you will go all the way to Wildcat camp and have to walk to Alamere Falls along the beach. But at high tide, (as it was), you will be skunked and not be able to reach Alamere Falls. I think it would clue in once you passed the bridge over Alamere Creek that you missed the turnoff, but most people we saw seemed to be unprepared and have no clue. We corrected some of the hikers we saw to go back the right way, but another thing is the tide. It was high tide and the waves would be (I know they were) crashing right up against the cliffs. That means it would be impossible to go down to the beach to see the waterfall. If you did go down, you could easily be swept out to sea. I wonder how many people have died down there at high tide. Bottom line, people: be prepared! Check your map! Check the tides! Go to my website and get proper information!

We got back to the car at 1PM. The parking lot was completely full. All those people hiked to Alamere Falls and could not even see it except from the top. We ate our lunch, and then made the long drive home. It was an awesome two day trip to Point Reyes National Seashore.

For the first time ever, our entire family went along on a backpacking trip with me. You heard me right, all four of us. It’s a miracle! How did I do it? It actually only took one word: ocean. If I say that word to my wife, she gets all giddy and excited. It probably took a few more words for my kids to agree.

I planned this trip months in advance. You have to do this because it is very difficult to get reservations at the Wildcat campground in Point Reyes National Seashore. Even a couple months in advance, everything was booked except for one last campsite, and that only for one night (Friday). All the stars need to align as well: the tides, and of course the weather. There are only a couple days a year where the tides come into alignment for what I wanted to do. As for the weather, we needed a lot of rain leading up to the event, and then nice weather on the day of the event. This is winter in California. Good luck with that madman. But that is exactly how it all panned out. We had quite a bit of rain in the two weeks before our trip (not nearly as much as I hoped – but it was enough). Then the weather showed a break for Friday. More rain was expected on Saturday afternoon. It turned out to be absolutely perfect timing. It was not even going to be very cold. I guess I could take credit for planning this out so perfect, but then I’d be struck by lightning. God is so good to us. Thank you Lord! I should also mention that I needed cloudy skies to take photos of this waterfall. That happened also. It was another miracle. Again, thank you God!

I was not able to do everything I wanted on this trip. We got a very late start. That is mostly because the visitor center does not open until 10AM! By the time we got our permits and got to the trailhead, it was 11:30AM before we started hiking. We did not arrive at Alamere Falls until 2PM, which is much later than I wanted. I had hoped to be at camp by this time, and then we’d have time to setup camp and hike up to Horsetail Falls before dark. Horsetail Falls is only accessible at very low tide and that was my primary goal for this trip, but we did not even get to camp until 5PM, and sunset is at 5:30PM, so going to Horsetail was out of the question. There is always next year. And next year, I will make sure I have enough time to get up to Horsetail.

We spent a lot of time at Alamere Falls, eating our lunch, and resting, and enjoying the waterfalls. Since it was Friday, there were not too many other people here (when we came back on Saturday, we passed a ton of people on the trail). It was beautiful and sunny for the hike up to the falls. We had grand views of the ocean. It clouded over in the afternoon by the time we arrived. Perfect. I went down to the beach to take my photos, while the rest of the crew rested up top. They were pretty tired, and so did not want to go down. It is a steep and tricky descent, and you need to be very careful, but I did not think it was too bad (it looks worse than it is). The rangers try (unsuccesfully) to dissuade people from coming down to Alamere Falls this way. They say there is poison oak (there is not), and that the descent is too dangerous (it is not – if you are careful). Don’t be stupid though and do something you are not prepared for and don’t have proper footwear for – such as going barefoot (we saw some hikers doing this – I could not believe it).

After photographing Alamere Falls, I went back up to get my crew. We would all have to descend to the beach with our packs on. With the tide going out, it would be an easy hike up the beach to Wildcat campground. We all made it down safely. Speaking of packs, you may want to know our pack weights: Leon: 43 pounds, Tara: 22.5 pounds, Jadon: 20.5 pounds, Nekoda: 14 pounds! You would think they would want to help the old man out and take on some more weight, but no sir! Actually, I did not mind taking on the extra weight. I wanted them all to be comfortable and to enjoy the trip as much as possible. Even with the light packs, they all had some difficulty.

The hike up the beach to Wildcat was the most enjoyable part of the entire hike. Too bad it was only 1 mile long. Along the way, we had a very close encounter with a huge elephant seal sleeping by the cliffs. We could hear it snoring as we passed by. We kept our distance (as you must), but it was a very cool experience.

We arrived at our campsite at 5PM. We setup camp, made our dinner and ate it in the dark, then we went to bed. There was only one other group in the entire campsite. Even though all the sites were booked (including one of the large group sites), no one was there. I am confused about this: If you book a campsite months in advance for January, what are you thinking? If it is not balmy and warm, you are going to cancel it? You do not get your money back if you cancel it. (and it is $20 – so not particularly cheap).  This is winter, people! Oh I am afraid it is only going to be 51 degrees, we just cannot go if it is that cold. If the weather was really awful then I would have canceled our trip also, but frankly I thought the weather we had was perfect. No rain, and the low temperature was only 51 degrees (which is very warm for January). There were showers forecast for overnight while we were sleeping, and I was expecting to have some, but we did not even get any showers at all. It was a fantastic day one in Point Reyes National Seashore.

This weekend was a disaster. Or it started out that way. I drove 110 miles to go on a hike to see a waterfall. It was a beautiful morning. The hike was good. I arrived down to the waterfall. It was completely dry. Not even a trickle. This was all just after a big storm. How could it possibly be dry? I was not expecting it be roaring, but I definitely expected it to be decent. After this hike, I had a second hike planned as well in the same area. However, I scrapped it. If the first waterfall was dry, the second one would likely be dry as well. I decided to just drive on back home, 110 miles.

I was feeling bummed, so I decided to redeem myself in the afternoon and go on another hike close to home. This one I knew would be flowing.

Going to this waterfall on a Saturday afternoon is iffy. I much prefer hiking here in the morning. There is only room for 4 cars to park at the trailhead. Well, I arrived at 1:30PM and there was exactly one space available for me. Thank you God for saving it for me. I saw all the other hikers coming up the hill as I was going down. One of them asked me if one could backpack down here on this trail. I thought that was a weird question, but afterwards it donned on me that he saw my big camera pack, and must have thought I was backpacking, not day hiking. Ha ha. I also noticed a LOT of small burned areas along the trail. It was as if people were having campfires in various spots all along the trail. After the first few, I realized this was some sort of official burning (ie. not random kids doing it).  But why? Why would the park rangers do all this burning of wood along the trail? I can think of three very good reasons not to do this: (1) It violates Leave No Trace principles, (2) It could easily start a forest fire, and (3) It is just plain stupid. I don’t get it. Someone please explain it to my little brain.

I have been to American Canyon Creek Falls many times before. It is a fairly easy hike. It is a little thing, but it is a pretty little thing, and very unique. I love this littlest waterfall. I did not really want to go back to American Canyon this weekend, I would have much preferred better success in the morning on the two different hikes, but nonetheless I enjoyed myself down at the littlest falls. I hiked back up the hill, arriving at the car just before dark, I drove home, ate my spaghetti dinner, and watched my Vancouver Canucks move into first place after beating the Sharks. Yeah. It may have been a bad morning, but the afternoon and evening were great.

Sometimes I just feel like staying home and doing absolutely nothing, and that is just what I did this past weekend. So no new waterfalls this week. This one is from Christmas Day, in Marysville BC, Canada.

The new stats are in: As of Jan. 1, we are at 68% of average for rainfall in Northern CA, 73% (central), 81% (south). For snowpack, we are at 82% (north), 96% (central), 112% (south). As you can see, we did not progress much in December. We had zero big storms last month. The first half of January is also looking bleak, but there is hope for the last half of the month to do some catchup. Let’s keep praying.