Leon Turnbull Photography

Last weekend was a bust. I put my back out bending down to feed the darn cats. Ugh! It bugs me because I have been doing my back exercises regularly. I rested all week, and was ready to hike the next weekend.

Spring has not started yet. I am very happy about that, though most people around here are not. After a brief respite from the monster February, the rain has started up again in California, and looks to continue for another couple weeks at least. Hoo yah! It was a rainy Saturday morning (again), and I was out hiking in it. I was hoping to go on three different hikes, but I over estimated how hard the first one would be. It was hard! But it was awesome.

I drove down this dirt road for 8 miles. I was surprised the road was in very good condition and I could drive this far on it. I expected a lot of mud, perhaps a washout or slide or tree down. Well, there was a washout on the road, actually, but it was at the 8 mile mark. From that point, it was only another two miles down to the waterfall. It should be an easy hike, right? Ha!

It was easy hiking down the road, but the last part involves a huge descent off trail, through the brush, through the poison oak, and down the steep mountain to the creek and waterfall. It was steep and it was cliffy, and once I got down close to the falls, it became very brushy, and there was a lot more poison oak. I could see the falls through the trees, but I could not see any way down to it. I was about to give up. I decided I would try one more route. This one was golden. I was able to get through the brush, and down to the creek level, right near the bottom of the falls. This is called French Creek Falls, 50 ft. high, and it was roaring! I could not believe how much water was flowing in the creek. It is not a very big creek (normally), but it sure was big today. It was spectacular, but very difficult to photograph because of all the mist from the falls. I am sure I touched some of that poison oak, but I have hope I do not get the itch.

What goes down must go back up. It was a tough climb back up to the road. Then an easy hike back to the car? But wait … I was not quite done yet ….

 

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If I may be so bold, I would like to say something to all you Ventana Wilderness hikers: I think that many of you think you are very “hearty” and “tough” hikers, because you regularly hike through so much deadfall, heavy brush, swaths of ticks, and forests of poison oak. Granted, it is very tough, but that is my objection: It is not enjoyable! Ticks give you lyme disease. Poison oak gives you a horrible rash. If I was immune to poison oak, I would have no trouble bashing through it for 26 miles, as it covers over the entire trail for that distance. However, if I touch a single leaf, I will get the itch. I cannot afford to get that again this year. (already had a horrible case already). After two miles of going incredibly slowly, trying desperately to not touch any of it, I decided enough was enough, and I turned around to go to a different trail. If it was just the ticks (and there were plenty), I could deal with it (-maybe-), but not the oak. I can not hike like this for 26 miles. As for the brush, I can do a good bush whack to find a waterfall, and I have done so many times, but that is not enjoyable or fun either. It is hard! And if the brush is laced with poison oak, I probably would not do it, even if there is a waterfall.

So there you go. Thus was my failed attempt in the Ventana Wilderness recently. At this point I am thinking I will never hike in Ventana again, even though there are plenty of more waterfalls to see there. Just say no to Ventana! I don’t know. Perhaps I will try again next year. This is a throwback to one successful attempt in Ventana from last year: Sugar Falls.

 

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February was just Febru-tastic! At the beginning of February, we were basically average across the board. As of Mar. 1, here is the update: Snow pack is 147% of normal (northern CA), 154% (Central Sierra), 146% (Southern Sierra). Rain fall is 133% of normal (north), 127% (central), and 122% (south). All is looking good, and the rain looks to be roaring into March. We should end up well above average for the year. But …. I just want to say one thing. Please do not complain about all the rain and snow we are getting! I’ve been hearing a lot of complaints recently. If you live in Lake Tahoe, and do not like the snow, why do you live there!!?? Do you want us to go into another huge drought?? Believe me, another drought is coming. Indeed, my prediction is that it will be even worse than the last one. We have basically four months out of the entire year where we get all (or most) of our rain and snow. (Dec-Mar). No one should be complaining about rain or snow that we get during these four months. We had a horrible start to the winter. Everyone was complaining about the lack of rain and upset about the fires that happened. Now people are complaining about the abundance of rain. Personally, I am praising God for all the rain (and we all should be). It is also important to note that Lake Oroville is *NOT* full yet and is BELOW normal (because they drained it after spillway incident a couple years ago). We still need a lot more rain in March to fill that reservoir. Hopefully we will get it in March.

Anyhow … speaking of rain… it was just a wee bit rainy on Saturday morning. I still wanted to hike, however, since I missed hiking last weekend. Going to Napa was not my first choice. However, everywhere else I thought of, it seemed to be just very heavy rain all morning. In Napa, supposedly, the rain was ending early. Indeed, when I woke up on Saturday,my weather app said it was just cloudy there. The rain had already stopped (supposedly). I decided to go to Napa.

As I drove down the freeway from Sacramento,there was a torrential downpour. In fact, the rain was extremely heavy for the entire drive. It seemed to be getting worse the further west I drove. Is it really not raining in Napa? Visibility was poor. I had to drive slow. It was ridiculous. By the time I got to Napa, it was still raining (not cloudy), but at least it was now just light rain. When I got to the trailhead, it was just misting. So I would not call that cloudy, but it was not rain either. It was really the perfect hiking weather.

I have not hiked to the Palisades before. I have been wanting to go. I heard there is a waterfall there. It should be great today.

It is a good trail. It is a very interesting trail. There is a rock maze along the way which you can walk through, and try to make it to the center of the maze. Whoever did this, must have worked for many many hours. Maybe it was aliens. I am not a fan of rock piles and cairns and such in the wilderness, but this was very cool. The trail is also very long. It is a hard trail. The hike was 3 miles longer than I expected, and the waterfall was much further than I thought. The elevation gain on the hike was much more than I thought (about 1800 ft. in total). All in all, it was a pretty darn tough hike. At least it was all on trail, but I do think I somehow managed to touch some poison oak.

I finally arrived at the waterfall. I was almost ready to give up, since I had been so much hiking further than expected. That would have sucked. I am glad I kept going. It is a very gorgeous 48 ft. high falls. I just wish that tree was not there at the bottom of it. I did go down to the bottom of the falls, which was not too difficult, and was pretty cool, but it was too difficult to photograph the waterfall from the bottom because of all the mist. There was no just good spot. The best place to photograph it was from the top. But here too, it was difficult. The cliffs are extremely unstable. I did not want to get very close to the edge. It was a big dropoff to the bottom of the cliff. Not fun.

It was a long and tough hike back to the car. Six hours total hiking there and back. Was it worth the effort? I would say, yes. It was a Febru-tastic day in Napa Valley.

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Every so often the mist from the waterfall would rise and cover the view, making it seem as if it was fogged in. Pretty darn cool.

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It has been a long time coming. I have wanted to go to this waterfall on the Lost Coast for many years. This weekend, the conditions seemed perfect. All the stars were aligned: Lots of recent rain, a break in the weather (for a couple days), a rare minus tide at sunset (required to get to the falls).

I took the day off work, and made the very long drive out to California’s fabled Lost Coast. It is possible to drive to the Usal campground. The road is very rough, very steep, very narrow, and very muddy. It is not something I really had any desire to drive. Thus, I decided to park my car and walk the 6 miles into the campground. That is my excuse. The truth is that I could have easily driven in to the camp. There were plenty of others that drove in (actually, a lot more than I expected to see at Usal). However, I did not want to drive. I “wanted” to hike in. I “needed” to do a backpack trip. I could have chosen a different location perhaps, but I really wanted to go to this particular waterfall, and as I mentioned, the conditions were perfect for it. So … was I laughed at by the other drivers that passed me on the road? Perhaps, but I did not care. I definitely did not regret it.

The hike is 6 miles, and is not too difficult, except for the 1000 ft. elevation gain, and then a 1000 ft. descent down to the campground. There are not very many views along the road, until you near the end. Then the magnificent ocean finally comes into sight. I could actually see the waterfall way down at the far end of the coast, such a long way away. I was not in a rush on this hike, and took plenty of video and photos.

It was the Monday of the long weekend. I was not surprised there would be people at Usal camping on the weekend. And there were. I also expected that they would be leaving on Monday, and I would (hopefully) have the camp all to myself on Monday night. This also was the case. When I arrived, there was still one vehicle in the camp, but they left before too long, and then I was all by myself. The strange thing, though, was that on my hike back out on Tuesday I saw quite a few drivers coming into Usal. I found it extremely odd that so many people would be coming into this very remote location in the middle of a week day in the middle of winter.

Anyway, I came to the bridge over Usal Creek. This creek was unbelievably huge. It would be uncrossable without a bridge. Fortunately there was a bridge. I crossed and looked for a campsite. There are many campsites here. None of them were great campsites, except for the ones closest to the beach, but there was a strong cold wind and those ones were not sheltered at all. I chose a sheltered spot away from the beach, setup my tent, and made my dinner.

After dinner, I hiked down the beach to the waterfall for sunset. It is a long hike. The beach is mostly very rocky, which is hard on the feet and quite slow going. I was taking a lot of photos and video, so that obviously increased the time but coming back afterwards, I was hiking as fast as possible, and it took a full hour or longer to get back to camp. Finally, I arrived at the falls. It was absolutely beautiful! It drops about 80 ft. right into the ocean. I love it (not!) when everyone says there are only two waterfalls in California that drop right into the ocean (can you guess which ones they say?). In reality, there are many more waterfalls than those two that fall into the ocean and this is one of them. With the minus tide, I could walk right up to it and photograph it from in front, in order get the stream in the foreground. I did not have to wait too long for sunset, but I oddly had cell service here so I made sure to send some photos to my jealous wife while I waited.

After taking photos at sunset, I booted it back to camp. As you can imagine, if it takes a full hour to hike along the beach, I arrived back at camp well after dark. I had my headlamp of course. The big problem was trying not to twist my ankle on the very rocky beach in the dark. I made it back without incident, jumped into my tent and warm sleeping bag, and went to bed.

I was warm in my sleeping bag all night, but in the morning there was a lot of condensation on my tent and on the outside of my sleeping bag. Everything was soaking wet. (not on the inside of my bag, though, thankfully!). It was cold outside, but I walked down to the ocean one last time while I tried to let things dry out (which did not happen because there was no sun out yet).

So I did something slightly stupid while down at the ocean, taking photos. The tide was coming in. I was taking photos along Usal Creek where it flows into the ocean. A wave came up, all the way to the creek. I saw it coming and got out of there in time. Only problem is that I forgot to pick up my glove. The wave pushed the glove into the creek, that very big creek, and it started to flow down the creek towards the ocean. Oh my gosh! I dropped my gear in a safe spot, and splashed through the ocean water, along the creek bed, where I then had to plant my foot right into the creek in order to reach in and grab the glove. My foot was now soaking wet and it would be cold for the rest of the morning (even after putting on a dry sock), and of course I could not wear the glove (which is bad because it was a cold morning). Thankfully, however, I did not lose anything. I survived the ocean yet again.

After this excursion to the beach, I ate my breakfast and packed up my very wet gear. Now I am sure you are thinking that since most everyone drives to Usal campground, the campground must be squeaky clean because everyone has a vehicle and can easily pack out their trash. Yeah, nope. There is a lot of trash at the campground, annoyingly and sadly. I took out most of the trash I found at the two campsites that I used. I say two because the one I chose for my tent did not have a picnic table, so I used the neighboring site for eating my food. Those two sites I left pretty much immaculate when I left. (you can thank me later). My pack was much heavier on the hike back out (but that also had something to do with my wet tent gear).

I decided to take a slightly different route, rather than hiking along the road. There is a trail called Peter Douglas Coastal Trail, which is a new extension of the official Lost Coast trail, and it begins at the Usal campground. It is a bit longer, but I figured I had the time so why not try it. I am so glad I did this! The trail goes through an absolutely amazing old growth Redwood forest. These trees were utterly spectacular and unique; this is one of the best Redwood hikes I have ever done in my life. The hike ended with some amazing ocean views, and along the way I saw an elk as well. If I had driven up to the Usal campground instead of hike, I would have seen none of this. If I did not know already, now I KNEW I made the right decision to hike into the camp. It was a beautiful morning, and an awesome couple days on California’s Lost Coast.

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