Leon Turnbull Photography

I woke. It was two hours before sunrise. The wind had picked up enormously. It was not shaking my tent much, but it still kept me awake for those two hours. At sunrise, I got up, I packed up camp, and ate my breakfast. It would be another fairly long hike to my next destination, Llewellyn Falls. I have not been to this falls before. It is one you could do as a day hike if you wanted, but it is way off the beaten path from civilization, and that is why I had not been out to it yet. Plus it is not particularly big. A long way to go for a small waterfall. But as I was in the area seeing Carson Falls, a second night spent at Llewellyn Falls was a good plan.

I left camp at about 8AM. I hiked through Bear Alley. I saw no bears. Bummer.

I hiked all the way back on the same trail to Silver King Creek … along the East Carson River, crossing the East Carson River, past Soda Springs Ranger station, up the massive 1000 ft. hill from the river, and back to the junction of the trail to Llewellyn Falls at Silver King Creek. Silver King Creek had more flow than the East Carson River. This is strange. I could rock hop across the river, but nothing doing at this creek. I had to wade across. The water was up to my shins, and it was FREEZING cold. The creek seemed more like spring than autumn. From there I still have 4 miles up the valley. It is an enormously long valley. It seemed to never end, and it took quite a long time to hike that 4 miles (it was probably more like 8 miles – well, it seemed like that anyway). It was also very flat. Surely no waterfalls could live here. Finally I arrived at the end of the flat never ending valley, turned the corner, and climbed up the short hill. I was now close to the waterfall. A trail sign indicated an off shoot path over to the waterfall. I sure hoped there would be a campsite there. I was even more concerned there would not be any here (more so than at Carson). No need to worry. There were a few nice ones at the top of the falls, and an easy way to get down to the creek for water.

In the evening, I went down to the waterfall. It is not particularly impressive, only about 25 ft. high and that is including the upper cascades. Still, it is nice to visit once. I had to cross the creek to photograph the waterfall, which was difficult because the creek was flowing rather swift below the falls. To see all the tiers, I had to climb up the cliff on the other side. This was not bad. Crossing the creek was much trickier.
So I made it to the two waterfalls that I wanted to in Carson Iceberg Wilderness. Success. I just had a short hike the next day back to the trailhead. Except …

DAY 3.

I was FROZEN solid in the night. Cue the song. Well, maybe I was not frozen solid, but my water shoes were certainly frozen solid. I was FREEZING solid. The temperature was surely 10 degrees colder than the first night. I screwed up. I only checked the weather forecast at Carson Falls beforehand. I figured Llewellyn would be about the same. It is slightly higher in elevation but only 10 miles away. It surely could not be more than a couple degrees colder. Wrong. I guessed it was around 35-37 degrees the second night, and I did not pack enough warm clothes because I figured it would not be that cold. The first night at Carson, I was toasty, but the second night at Llewellyn not so much. I had all my clothes on me and in my 17 degree bag, but I was still cold. If I had just checked the weather forecast properly, I am sure I would have brought more clothes and would have been very fine. In the morning I awoke at sunrise, got up and packed. It was tough to do this because of the temperature. I should have just stayed in my sleeping bag another hour or so but I could not sleep anymore anyway. Mostly it was just my hands that were so cold. I did not bring my gloves. Lesson learned. Once the sun came out though, I warmed up very quickly. It was a good hike back to my car, and a wonderful 3 days in the Carson Iceberg Wilderness.

It was my last backpacking trip of the season. I suppose that is not saying much because October 1 marks the start of the new season! The new waterfall season that is (the only season that matters). Indeed, we may have our first storm of the season next week. Anyhow, it will no doubt be awhile before my next backpacking trip. Winter is coming. The weather has been splendid the entire month of September (for backpacking), and this was my third trip of the month. This time around: Carson Iceberg Wilderness. I think I have hiked in this Wilderness before, but not backpacked. My goal: to reach mysterious Carson Falls. I have only seen a couple photos of this waterfall before, and they were not good ones. They made it seem like Carson Falls is pretty much un-viewable, and I would not have been surprised to find it that way. Instead, I found glory. But before that…

I arrived at the trailhead on the Eastern Sierra Nevada side, and was hiking by 8:45am. A tad late, but not bad. A sign at the trailhead indicated that bears in this area are habituated to humans, un-afraid, and eager to get your food by all possible means. That is not a good sign.

After climbing up 500 ft. to the top of a ridge, the views open up tremendously. The landscape is magnificent. The fall colors are already starting to shine (it is still very early in the Fall season, but they are already close to peak). The scenery is much different here than say, Ansel Adams Wilderness, but still astoundingly beautiful. The beautiful yellow and orange Aspens really upped the ante of the beauty. It was stunning, and I took a lot of video, which thus slowed my pace considerably, but I was not too concerned. Until…

Once I crossed Silver King Creek, the trail to Carson Falls heads off westwards. I did not see any trail westwards. According to my USGS map, it should be immediate after crossing the creek. Not so. I bushwhacked a bit, eventually getting back on the proper trail. I realized I should have continued up Silver King Creek a bit more to the marked trail junction, but how would I know that based on my map. From here, the trail goes all the way to the East Fork Carson River. Again, my map showed a trail down to Soda Springs Ranger station along the river, but there was no such trail. I continued on the main (obvious) trail, but this new route would add a lot of mileage to my trip that was not planned. Finally down at river level, I stopped at Poison Creek to filter some water. Thankfully, the water was clear and not poisonous – if it was poisonous, my Sawyer squeeze handled it nicely. Here, I met the only other backpacker I saw all weekend (except I did see some horseback riders the next day). He was an older guy, he was not very talkative, but he said he came from Wolf Creek and would be camping somewhere along the East Carson River. I think it is quite a trek coming from Wolf Creek, so he must be doing good, and he was a lot older than the geezer writing this blog.

After crossing the East Fork Carson River – which I rock hopped across – though it was a bit hard to do that – the trail was once again lost to my senses. Eventually, I found it again and continued up the river … until I lost it again … until I then found it again. As you may be able to tell, the trail is not all that well traveled. Not many people hike this section of the trail, I think especially from Soda Springs to Carson Falls. Once on the trail, it was easy to follow. It is just those few times where it was very indistinct or missing. In other words, this section took much longer to hike than anticipated. In addition to this…

There is a 2 mile section along the river here which we shall affectionately call “Bear Alley”. I saw more bear scat along the trail here than I have seen in my entire life combined. Maybe not quite. If not, then it is very close. I am not kidding. Every 20 paces, bear scat. Every 10 paces, more bear scat. The closer I got to Carson Falls, the more prevalent it became. Every 5 paces, more bear scat. Most of it was not fresh, but some of it certainly was. This was not made by one bear. A family of bears. Angry momma, and her five adorable children. Let’s not forget perturbed papa bear. And probably grumpy grandpa bear too. You would think that with all the bear scat, I would see some bears on this trip. No such luck. I was looking for them. I was hoping to see one, but I did not see any bears, or any other wildlife either. I think I saw an eagle, but it was too far away to be certain. Nothing else was seen (not counting birds and squirrels).

As I approached closer to Carson Falls, the trail once again disappeared. Actually, it just seemed to end very abruptly and succinctly. Now what? It was late in the day, too late to go back. There must be a way to get over to Carson Falls. I started to bushwhack over towards it. Nothing doing. After a long bit of searching, I finally did find the proper trail over to it. It was very easy to miss it (I did miss it!), and again, my map showed something very different than actuality.

I hoped that there would be a campsite close to Carson Falls with access to the river, but I was not certain. It seemed pretty cliffy in that area, but fortunately, I found a great spot a short distance above the falls, and yes, one and only one spot where I could get down to the river. No bear scat in the immediate vicinity of the campsite. Awesome. It was 3:30pm when I arrived. I had hoped to get here by 12:30pm, and then do another hike in the afternoon up to Golden Canyon. There was now no time for that. I was way too tired and it was way too late. I wisely just stayed at Carson Falls for the rest of the afternoon and evening.

After setting up camp and making dinner, I proceeded down to the waterfall. There was a steep path to the bottom, and I started down it, but quickly balked. This was way too steep and dangerous. With a rope, it possibly would have been do-able, but I had no rope. I did not think I’d be able to see much from the bottom anyway. Instead, I climbed up onto a large protruding cliff overlook. This was not “too dangerous” except for the big huge drop-offs, but it provided a glorious view of Carson Falls, and I could see all three magnificent tiers of the waterfall (mostly). I really really really enjoyed this waterfall. It is very beautiful. At higher flows, it would be even more spectacular, but in late September it was still glorious.

I was very tired from the previous day’s hiking, but I did not sleep. I have no idea why I could not sleep. I should have been plenty tired. It was not cold (indeed, I was 1000 ft. higher in elevation and it was warmer than the first night). Well, I got up at 4AM, packed up my gear, and started my hike. It was very dark. There was no moon. There were plenty of stars.

The first part of this hike, there is no trail. The route goes through the (dark) woods, and across a (dark) meadow. Perfect habitat for wild animals. The previous night I saw many deer in this area. Where there are deer, there are mountain lions. I also saw fresh bear scat. I whistled loudly as I walked through this area. When I hike (in the dark), I always whistle the “ru ku ku” song from SCTV. If you know what that is, you are awesome (it’s a Canadian thing). Once I got on the actual trail, it was a bit less nerve wracking, but it was still dark and ominous. Back down around Ediza Lake, some people had put up their tents right beside the trail (or right in the middle of the trail in one case), so I had to walk right through their camping area, hoping not to wake them and freak them out.

I arrived down at Shadow Creek Falls (pictured here) (40 ft.) at sunrise. I was right on time. It is a gorgeous waterfall, and Shadow Creek (as I said already) was flowing very strong for so late in the year. There were some people down here at the base of the falls eating breakfast. This is not a legal place to camp, and I’m not sure if they were camping here or just eating breakfast here as they had all their gear packed up already. They were friendly, considering as I was disturbing their breakfast to photograph the waterfall. I did not talk to them much, I was in a hurry to photograph the falls and get going to the next one. As it is, I barely made it down to Shadow Lake Falls, the last waterfall on my journey. I only had about 2 minutes to photograph it before the sun got on it.

Now finally I could relax. I ate my breakfast at the viewpoint to Shadow Lake Falls. I still had a very long hike ahead of me. It was another 7 miles back to my vehicle (12 total for the day). It was very tiring, and I was beat, even  thought it was mostly downhill, and once I got down to the river level it was not all that majestically scenic any longer (compared to what I had been hiking through). I think the previous day really wore me out, and I was extra tired from not getting any sleep. I tried to cut off 1 mile of the hike by hiking on the road for the last little bit, but that was a huge mistake. Hiking on the pavement was very hard on my feet, and I do not even think I saved a half mile of hiking, let alone 1 mile of hiking. I finally made it back to my car at 11:30am. I drove up to John’s Pizza Works in Mammoth Lakes for lunch, then made the long drive home. At least the highway was now open. I slept well in my bed that night. It was an awesome 3 days in the Ansel Adams Wilderness.

I took my time in the morning, slept in a bit, ate breakfast and drank coffee. I had a tough day ahead of me.

I hiked up to Minaret Lake and found another new waterfall at the outlet, about 60 ft. high. Surprise! It was in the sun but I still took a photo of it. If I had known this was here, I probably could have gotten to it in good lighting. I studied all this area on Google Earth, but did not see this waterfall. Minaret Lake was gorgeous, as expected.

From here I had to climb the monstrous cliffs above the lake and over the pass to get to the other side. There is no trail. I had read there was a route that people used. I read it was steep. I read it was very steep. But it was not too difficult. I made it to the top. 10,300 ft. in elevation. I thought that would be the most difficult part of the hike today. Wrong. I went down to Cecile Lake and ate my lunch.

I thought the trek from Cecile Lake down to Iceberg Lake would be a piece of cake. There is an established trail, you can even see it on Google Earth. Nope. It was very steep, it was very treacherous, the ground and rocks were very loose and unstable. I had to slide down on my butt in the dirt a few times, and be extremely cautious as I descended. If you fell, you would end up allthe way to the bottom where there was a big snow field at lake level. A soft landing? Once down the steepest section, you are not done yet. You have to traverse over a huge talus slide to the other end of Iceberg Lake. The rocks are sometimes shifting, it is very slow going. One hiker I passed called this the Wall of Death. I thought it was a very appropriate description. It took a very long time.

Finally I arrived at the end of Iceberg Lake. There was no shade here, but I found a little bit behind a rock and rested. The hard part (the Wall of Death) was behind me. The rest of the hike would be easy.

As I hiked down to Ediza Lake, I noticed a large waterfall at the inlet to the lake. Another surprise. I had not known about this waterfall either, and this one looked like a very good one. I decided to change my plan. Initially I was going to camp up at Nydiver Lakes, but now I would camp at Ediza Lake and close to this waterfall, or better yet, at the waterfall.

Ediza Lake is supposed to be the prettiest of all the lakes in this area. Everyone seems to say this. It was certainly pretty, but no prettier than Minaret, Cecile, Iceberg, or Shadow Lakes. They were all equally gorgeous in my view. But Ediza Lake is by far the most popular lake to camp at, and there were a lot of people here already and it was still early. I prefer to camp in secluded spots with no one else around me. I figured there would not be anyone at the waterfall, if I could get up to it, and and if I could find a campsite there. It is a bit of a climb from Ediza Lake up to the falls, but not too difficult. There were not really any good options for camping there, but I found one small spot to put my tent. Not too shabby.

After dinner, I decided to go on an evening hike. I still hoped to get to the Nydiver Lakes waterfalls. However, I found that creek completely dry. I was not expecting much for that creek, but I did not think it would be all dried up. Instead, I went down to the Upper Shadow Creek Falls and photographed that waterfall (30 ft.). It was a little far to hike considering how tired I already was, but I guess it was worth it. Shadow Creek was flowing surprisingly strong for this late in the year. It is a glacier fed creek, so perhaps that is the reason (but so is Minaret Creek and that had much less flow). I hiked back to camp, arriving just before dark, and photographed the waterfall at my campsite (shown here), a marvelous 40 ft. high falls. I slumped into my tent and to bed.

I snagged a hard to get permit for Minaret Lake in the Ansel Adams Wilderness, a place I have wanted to go for a long time. My plan was to photograph Upper Minaret Falls in the evening, then hike up to the lake afterwards. However, it is a tough climb from the falls to the lake, and I probably would not make it there by sunset. By the time I got up there, it would be dark, and there would not be any good camping spots left as it is a popular place to camp, plus with no clouds in the forecast, there would not be much of a sunset at the lake anyway. A better option and a much easier option would be to just camp at the upper falls, and go up to the lake in the morning. Take it easy. Don’t let the sound of your own wheels make you crazy.

When I left the house, Hwy 395 was closed due to the Boot Fire, which was burning on both sides of the highway. Hwy 108 was also closed. Going through Yosemite to the Eastern Sierra would take much much longer. The official detour when through Nevada. It probably only added a half hour to my drive, but the speed limit is slower in Nevada. I heard from someone that the Nevada highway patrol like to pull over those speedy Californians, so I made sure not to speed (and I did see one person pulled over along the way).

I finally arrived at Mammoth Lakes, picked up my permit, and started hiking by 10am. The first section is on the John Muir Trail, and I saw many JMT hikers coming down into Reds Meadow. I think I gave one of them bad directions. I’m sorry about that. However, if you are a through hiker (or any type of hiker), you should know where you are going. I don’t think I would ever want to hike the JMT. It is just not my cup of tea. Most certainly, I would never hike the PCT. These through hikers just whip through the trail as fast as they can, and they miss seeing half of the great sites or more. I would much rather hike a short portion of it and see all the great sites (ie. ALL THE WATERFALLS) in that area. I have been thinking recently, however, that I might want to hike the entire High Sierra Trail; that one might work for me, but even so, I think everyone hiking that trail misses seeing at least half the waterfalls. I might rather just do a short section of that trail as well. Next year, perhaps.

After I got off the JMT section, I did not see anyone else on the trail up to the waterfall (I did see others going up to Minaret Lake later). I found a perfect campsite near the bottom of the falls. The waterfall was flowing decent, better than I expected for so late in the year. It was not great, but not bad. It was a beautiful spot.

However … as soon as I arrived at the camp, I smelled smoke in the air. I did not think there were any fires in the area. There had not been any smoke at all until I got to this one location at the waterfall. Was this a new fire? Did some idiot leave an illegal campfire unattended? I checked all around but I saw nothing and no one. I just prayed there were no new fires and I would not get burned to a crisp while I slept. Everyone (including myself) is too paranoid this year because of all the fires. A little smoke freaks everyone out (including myself). As it turned out, I think the smoke was from the Lions Fire, but it was strange because it was only in this one little area.

I had my dinner, relaxed for a long time waiting for the sun to go down, and texted my wife (there was cell service here). In the evening I went up to photograph the upper falls (shown here), and another waterfall I discovered close by as well. It was a glorious day.