Leon Turnbull Photography

Not much happening with me this past weekend. On Sunday afternoon, after church, I took some friends to see how good old Bassi Falls was behaving these days. This was the Pastor of another church with his wife and daughter and one of their friends. I dragged my son Jadon along for the ride as well (kicking and screaming?).

So what is the deal with the Bassi Falls trail now? I’m sure you are all wondering about it, just like myself. The USFS website indicates the road should be open now, but it is still gated at Ice House Rd. What I really am wondering about is now there is a new “permanent” sign saying no motor vehicles are allowed on the road. This leads me to think it may be gated permanently. I guess we will find out in another month or so. There is also a new trail to Bassi Falls now, which has been just opened in the last year or so. I had never taken this trail before, but we took it this time. It is 2 miles and is quite an easy trail. It is well signed and easy to follow for the most part. However, the old trail was only a half mile long, so compared to that, it is not so easy. Everything is relative, right?

I have mixed feelings about all this. On the one hand, you would think that if the trail is harder then less people will go to see Bassi Falls. This would be a good thing because Bassi Falls is a complete madhouse on the weekends in the spring and early summer. Less people would mean the Bassi Falls experience will be much more pleasant. However, the reality is that an easy 2 mile trail is not going to keep anyone away. Even this weekend, on a stormy Sunday afternoon in April, and in very early season, there were a lot of people at Bassi Falls, despite the extended walking required. Half of the people did not even know about the new trail, so they had to walk up the old road to the old trailhead. That is much tougher, but they still did it. Also, hiking 2 miles vs. a half mile makes it much more difficult to see Bassi Falls at sunrise or sunset, when the light is at the best. But I did find one interesting surprise on hiking this new trail. I will talk more about that later.

I felt very tired on the hike. As I said, it is an easy 4 mile (round trip) hike. Elevation gain is minimal. I hope it was just because it was a warm, sunny, Sunday afternoon. Normally I just relax on Sunday afternoons, and thus I was not mentally prepared to do any hiking. I have a big trip coming up in a couple weeks, and I will be hiking 7-10 miles per day for about a week. How am I going to do a 10 mile hike every day with 3000 ft. elevation gain when I cannot do a 4 mile hike with 200 ft. elevation gain? Oh boy. Can’t wait to find out.

I have already said the weather was stormy and also that it was warm and sunny. Did you catch that? So what was it man? Make up your mind. It was both! I swear the weather literally was changing every two minutes. It was raining, then two minutes later it was sunny, then it was cloudy, then it was sunny, then raining. It was crazy weather. All in all though, the light was not too great, and I’m not excited about the photos I got this time. But it did not matter much, I was not there to take photos.

The falls were flowing quite well and strong with snow melt. Everyone was happy. One fun thing about Bassi Falls is trying to get up closer to it, which requires you to walk through the extremely cold creek. This is easy enough to do, and Jadon and I worked our way onto a big rock up close to the falls. But the daughter of my friend and their other friend went a lot further, jumping across into the very middle of the creek onto some more big rocks. The problem is that this was extremely dangerous. The creek is raging. If you slipped and fell into the creek, you would be swept downstream. It may be fun to jump over to the middle in front of the falls, but it’s not worth it! I told the girl to be extremely careful, it is dangerous, but that was all I could really say. Her parents were off somewhere else and not watching. I couldn’t make her not do it, but I could make my son not do it, and I told him he would not be following her, but he said “don’t worry daddy, I have no intention whatsoever of going over there”. Ok whew, he is definitely a smart kid. Anyhow, the two of them made it ok. They just gave me a little heart attack, that is all.

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New York Canyon Falls is surely the most spectacular waterfall in California outside of Yosemite. Am I right? A 462 ft. high waterfall in very remote territory, no trails, rugged and almost inaccessible canyon, incredible beauty. There is nothing else like it.

It is at least 10 times more difficult to get to it in April, when it is flowing at its best. I’ve been wanting to do this as a day hike and at peak flow in April for a long time, but how? And even more so, to get there in good lighting. It was time to try it.

However, I slept very poorly on Friday night. Why does that always happen before a big hike? I slept so bad, I turned my alarm off. There was no way I was going to get up at 3AM to do this. When I finally did get up, I thought I could go for a hike in the afternoon, but just something very easy, nothing hard. Well, later, I said maybe, maybe if I can drive all the way to Tadpole, then perhaps, perhaps I could try the New York Canyon hike. It would be 5 miles one way from there. That’s not too bad. I did a 6.5 miles hike a couple weekends ago in the evening. Yeah but … one problem … this hike had about 3000 ft. of elevation to climb.

So guess what? I could drive all the way to Tadpole. Did I really really really want to try this? I think my mind was not in agreement with my body. The mind won out. But the body had the last laugh.

It is weird that there was zero snow up to Tadpole, then all of a sudden, 2-3 feet of snow on the ground, almost instantaneously. I would need my snowshoes. There were some campers at the end of the road at Tadpole, and they told me they had driven up the road in their “snow jeeps” all the way to Robinson Flat. I told them to send a search party for me if I did not get back from my hike. It might be needed. Indeed, it was almost needed.

There was about 2-3 feet of snow on the ground, in some places up to five feet, but it was hard packed walking on the road with the jeep tracks, and I really did not need my snowshoes. It was easier to wear them, though, then carry them, so that is what I did. When I got off the main road, however, the snow was deeper and softer. Snowshoes were definitely required here. It’s a good thing I brought them. As I descended, the snow became more patchy, and finally disappeared. I left my snowshoes along the side of the road. No one would be coming down this road, not even the jeepers. Bears, on the other hand? Yes to that. I did see some big old bear tracks in the snow as I walked down the road, I was following Mr. Bear into the great unknown. Well, hopefully, he would not come back and steal my snowshoes.

I hiked down Macklin Ridge towards the Middle Falls. I don’t know, but it seemed to me that Macklin Ridge was much steeper than before, and the rocks were much more loose and crumbly. What is going on, Rob Macklin? I expect to see a nice, maintained, and easy to follow trail. Geepers, you name a ridge after a friend and then he doesn’t even bother to maintain it properly. Seriously, though, it is not likely the ridge that is worse, it is my memory that is worse. Old age, you know.

So … what do you suppose is the one thing that I was most concerned about on this hike? Was it the long hiking distance (5 miles)? No, not that. Was it walking through 5 feet of snow? Nope. Was it the huge elevation that I had to climb (about 3000 ft.)? No, but I suppose that definitely should have been the most concerning. Was it the bear that I was about to catch up to? Negative. So what was it then that I was so concerned about? Two words: creek crossing. There is just something about crossing a fast flowing creek at the top of a 462 ft. high waterfall that is just a little disconcerting. Perhaps it’s just me. The Middle Falls looked to be flowing very strong. This crossing could be deadly. However, this is not even nearly the same thing as crossing into the Merced River at the top of Vernal Falls. That is just plain obviously stupid. This crossing is only partially stupid. No, I am kidding. The truth was, that I had no idea what this crossing would be like. I have only been here at low flows before, I have never even gotten my feet wet. In the past there has also been a big log that allows for an easy crossing. What would it be like at higher flows? I did not know. If it was too dangerous, I would just go back to the Middle Falls. As it turned out, however, the crossing was easy. I had worried for nothing. The log was still there, but I missed it, coming down to the creek above stream from it. Instead of trying to get back down to it, I just put on my water shoes and made the very easy crossing. No problem. On the way back, I crossed on the log, which was even easier.

After the creek crossing, I knew I would make it. I knew it was going to be glorious. It is still a big descent down to the knoll opposite the falls, and again, it seemed to be much steeper than I remembered in the past. I am definitely losing my mind. The waterfall was stunning. The first time I came here with my brother-in-law it was much bigger but we were on the other side that time. This was certainly the best I have seen it from this location, but still I was hoping for a lot more. I missed peak flow by one week. The flow from the North Fork Dam was about 1200 cfs, and the week before it was over 2000 cfs. But there is still a lot of snow to melt, and if it gets warm again, the flow is going to go back up. Will I come back again this year? Ha!

It was 5:30PM and the waterfall was still in the sun. I did not want to start hiking back out of the canyon any later than 5:30PM. My calculations had told me it would be in the shade by 5:30. It was not. The sun took FOREVER to go down behind the ridge. Finally, at about 5:50PM the falls got into shade, but just barely. I took my pictures quickly and got out of there, 20 minutes late. It is a very tough and slow slog up that mountain, yet I thought I was making good time. I found my snowshoes along the road. The bears did not drag them off. I got back to the main road at 8PM, in the dark, and very tired. I was about done. Oh how I wished I could have driven to this point! Yet I still had another couple miles and 300 ft. up to the top of Canada Hill. I did not make it. I bonked. I was done. I almost puked a couple times on the road. I could not eat or drink, though I forced myself to drink anyway. I decided to just lay down and wait for my rescue party in the jeeps to come get me. But they would not be coming. I am sure they were all quite drunk by now. So I got up and continued on. It took an hour to hike those two miles to the car, but I made it back at 9PM.

One of the campers called out to me: “Hey snowshoe guy, you made it back! I was worried about you” (and yes, he did sound drunk). I said something back to him, but I don’t think he heard me as he was too engrossed in his beer drinking. I was hoping they would have offered me a beer, but then I really would have puked, probably. Instead, I got a soda at the store in Foresthill. It was a glorious day in New York Canyon and it will take me quite a few days to recover from this one.

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So I had a great old big epic hike planned this past weekend, but I slept like crap, the animals kept me awake most of the night, and my back started hurting again that night for no particular reason at all. I decided to sleep in a bit longer and do a much easier hike: Stony Creek.

The rain had stopped and the sun was trying to come out. This was unexpected. I expected more rain. As I drove up the road, I drove past a sign saying “Road Closed”. I couldn’t figure out why that sign was there anyway. The road is paved and not gated, it might make sense if the road was not paved. Anyway I figured it must be fine to continue on the road as it must be there because of snow, but the snow had all melted now, so therefore it was perfectly acceptable to keep driving, and besides, many other cars had already gone up the road in previous days. I made it almost all the way to the trailhead before I hit a big old snow patch. I parked along the side of the road and hiked.

It was 4 miles one way, but mostly easy going, not much elevation gain/loss on this hike. At the high point of the hike, I came along quite a bit of snow to trudge through, but fortunately it was hard packed and I did not sink in. Continuing on, I soon lost the snow as I started to descend into the canyon. After four miles of hiking I was close to the creek, I just had to get off the road and go straight down. This part was a bit hair raising.

The ground was thoroughly saturated, and not to mention I was hiking through the fire area, so all this made it very dicey to descend the steep hill. The ground was incredibly slick. I slipped once. I slipped twice. I slipped a third time right into a big huge hole. I could have easily broke my leg in that hole, but thankfully there was no damage. After that, I was a lot more careful. Indeed, I took one step at a time, making sure each foothold was secure. It was getting much steeper as I got closer to the creek and waterfall now. I certainly would not want to slip right off a cliff. It wasn’t cliffy actually, but it was steep for sure. I still could have had quite a big spill if I slipped, but I was done with slipping. I made it down to the falls.

I thought this waterfall was incredibly pretty, a 60 ft. high waterfall in two tiers. It was hard to see the upper tier, but the lower tier was pretty just by itself. The sun was really trying to come out now, but never quite made it, and I was able to take some nice shots of the falls before hiking back up the mountain. Then the rain started up again.

I picked up a lot of trash on the hike back up. I couldn’t believe the amount of beer cans I found, some of which were clearly burned in the fire a couple years ago, but some other ones were much newer. So annoying. I also found something very strange. Someone had left their weed in a container that was shaped like a moose, or a pig, or a pig-moose. I have seen a lot of stuff and trash left on the trails, but this is a first. People don’t usually just throw out their pot on the side of the road.

I got back to the car, and started driving home. I came back to that ‘road closed’ sign (remember that?), and there I saw a ranger driving up the road. Clearly he must have seen that I was on the wrong side of that sign, and I wondered if he was going to stop me, but he did not. I wonder, though, if I had finished my hike about an hour or so later, if he would have ticketed my car for parking in the forbidden zone. He clearly was very ticket happy today, that is for sure. Why would I say such a thing? Well, I drove back down the hill and wanted to check out Bassi Falls, to see if the road was open yet. It was not open, which I do not understand, because their website says it is open now. But there were some cars parked along the road, one of which was parked right in front of the gate. And guess what? He had a ticket from the ranger in his window. Poor guy shouldn’t have parked in front of the gate, I guess, even though there were no signs and it was obvious no one would be opening said gate. I’m just glad I got off the mountain before he got to my car. Heh heh. And what if he had searched my car and saw that weed? Oh my oh my. LOL.

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No early morning hiking this past weekend. My daughter had a skating event which I had to go to. But afterwards … I wanted to drive up Foresthill Rd as far as I could go. Where would I end up? (besides in the ditch or off a cliff).

Well … the results are in … I know you all want to know … I made it just past Beacroft, not quite to Ford Pt. There was surprisingly not all that much snow up there, I was expecting a lot more and not be able to drive even that far. In a week or two you could probably drive up to and past Ford Pt, but for now there was a big snow patch. I parked there and got ready to hike, and as I was doing so, a couple separate cars came up and continued to drive through the first snow patch. Both of them very nearly got stuck. I was certain I was going to need to help push them out of their stupidity. Both of them made it through, however, then realized they had to turn around anyway because there was a second much more substantial snow patch immediately following. I left them to their amusements, and climbed up the steep hill through the snow to Ford Pt and to infinity and beyond.

From my car it would be a 6.5 mile hike ONE WAY. The elevation would be substantial, a lot of up and down hiking, up 500 ft., down 500 ft., up 300 ft., down 300 ft., up 12,000 ft., down 12,000 ft., you get the picture. All in all, it would be about 2600 ft. in total. I would not be getting back to the car before dark. I know physically I can do a 13 mile hike, but mentally not so much. I kept telling myself to turn back, I do not really want to do this, no keep going to the next junction, it’s not far, no this is utterly ridiculous, I will be attacked by mountain lions when I return in the dark. Well, my inner motivator won out and I kept going … onwards and upwards.

There was not a lot of snow, as I said, but there were many snow patches along the way, and a few of them were over 3 ft. deep, which I had to walk through. Without snowshoes. Fortunately, the snow was packed enough that I did not sink in. Otherwise, I might still be buried out there somewhere. I found an odd little bike beside the road at one point, against a tree, and beside it what seemed like a makeshift campsite, mostly just a tarp strewn over a bunch of camp items. Basically, just garbage left there, and far too much to pick up on my way back. It had obviously been there a while. But it made me wonder what happened to the biker? It was just a small little one gear bike but it seemed perfectly good. Why leave it there? Most likely he was eaten by a bear while he was sleeping there because he did not secure his food properly. That’s my working theory.

I arrived down at the bottom of the canyon a little after 5PM. I was expecting a waterfall twice as big, but I found just a small 26 ft. high falls. That is a heckuva long hike for such a small waterfall. Up to this point the hike was fairly easy, but the last section down to the creek was very cliffy and very brushy. I could not find a way down to the bottom. I searched around frantically, I had no time to waste now, and finally found a view of the upper most portion of the falls (20 ft.), from a rock which had steep dropoffs all around, but I got out to it carefully, setup my tripod, took my photos, then got the heck out of there.

As I said, I had no time to waste. It was now 5:40PM. I did not want to leave any later than this to hike back. I was tired but I booted it back up the mountain, only stopping for a couple short breaks along the way. The final 500 ft. climb back up to Ford Pt was in the dark, but I saw no critters, and I got back to the car at 8:10PM, about 30 minutes after dark.

This was the longest hike of the season so far, and I forgot one important thing about these hikes. It takes two days for me to recover from them. Getting to sleep that night was difficult because of my achy bones, and I had to get up early in the morning to play drums at church. Not just one service but two services. I was dead tired. There was no way I could stay awake for the second service. Fortunately, I was saved by my son’s Sunday school teacher. She always (or often) brings donuts for the kids, and had some extras today. Whew, that was the only thing that got me through that second service. Nonetheless, when I got back home I was beat and took a long nap in the afternoon. Sweet, however I was still tired at work on Monday, and next weekend I need to do it all over again. Ha!

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Winter is over. Spring is here. It’s the end of the world. (in my view, anyway). Everyone, media and otherwise, is saying that El Nino was so awesome this year, El Nino saved us, El Nino filled all our reservoirs, El Nino gave us a such a large snow pack, El Nino made a huge impact on our drought, El Niño this, El Niño that, blah, blah, blah. Well what do you think? To be honest, I am disappointed. I was expecting a lot more from the super big El Nino. Let’s be very clear: El Nino *did* make an impact on our winter in California. If we did not have El Nino this year, we would have had another awful year, and I am very grateful to God for sending the El Nino to give us drought relief and a decent winter. Nonetheless, we still have serious drought. Southern California had a horrible winter again. El Nino is supposed to make a big impact to southern California, and not so much in the north. In fact, it was the opposite: the north fared much better than the south. What are the numbers? We finished the winter with 125% of average precipitation in the north (less than 100% in the Southern Sierra Nevada). The snow pack results are worse: 97% of normal in the north, 88% in the central, and 72% in the south. So basically, we only had an average winter in the north, and a below average winter in the south. And yet I still hear people complain that we had too much rain this year in California. Are you kidding me? I would have hoped that we would end up well above average from a super El Nino in both the north and south. It gives me trepidation for the future. Next year we will be either ENSO neutral or have a weak La Nina, so does that mean we are back to the drought?

Well enough of that, on to better news …

I knew there was another waterfall above Burstarse Falls. But how could you get up to it? If you think you know the way yourself then you will be disappointed, but if you want to know the proper route, then you will find it on my website.
http://waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=upper-burstarse-falls-890

It is a killer climb, very steep, very difficult, very brushy, very crumbly loose rocks, and very cliffy. Did I miss anything? I really did not think I would get anywhere close to the falls. The total elevation gain on the hike is well over 2000 ft. and unfortunately I could not get the view of the waterfall that I wanted because it was too cliffy. No sense in dying just yet. I scrambled around for quite a while, and finally found a side view of the waterfall from the edge of a cliff to get this shot. Well, better this than nothing. It is a sweet looking waterfall slide for sure, 102 feet high, and the view from here is hard to beat with the Crags looming above you and an amazing view of the canyon. It did feel like I was at the end of the world.

It was a tough climb down the mountain, and I was dead tired when I got back to the car but I didn’t break any ankles on those loose rocks (it was close).

The next day, Easter Sunday morning, we were in church service, my kids were sitting in between my wife and I. I was sitting there rubbing my eye like crazy as it was very itchy. My wife is waving at me from the other end of the pew, as if to say what the heck is wrong with you? I’m like, huh? By evening, the verdict was in: My eye was all puffed up. I had poison oak in my eye. Oh crikey! I have only had poison oak in my eye once before, which was probably about 8 or so years ago. That was in both eyes, and it was so bad I had to go to the doctor. At that time, my daughter was very young and thought I was an alien from another planet. She would not go anywhere near me. Thankfully this time, she is older and wiser, and knows I am not an alien (or perhaps I have done well fooling her). Nonetheless, how did I get poison oak? There was no oak on this entire hike that I saw anywhere. I’m thinking it might have been on a different hike. That same afternoon, my wife, brother-in-law, and I went on a short geocaching adventure, and we did see poison oak. I absolutely did not touch it, but it was very “ripe”, just oozing with urushiol oil. At the time, I joked that all I have to do is look at the stuff and I will get poison oak. I seriously think that is what happened. The fumes in the oak leaves must have just wafted up to my eye. Invisible wafting oils? You no doubt think I am crazy, that is not possible, which is what my wife and brother-in-law think, but the only other alternative is I got the oak from the hike in which there was no poison oak. Either way, it is not fun. Oh and at the same time as all this, I have a mysterious bite on my back. It is all puffed up like a tick bite, but there were no embedded ticks, and I did not see any of them on my hike either. Invisible wafting ticks? Most definitely not fun.

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