Leon Turnbull Photography

So what is your favorite season? Mine is spring. That may surprise you. Maybe you thought I preferred winter? Well I do like winter, but in spring, the weather is warmer, the snow is melting, and the waterfalls in the high country are roaring. It is time to get out hiking and enjoy them! It will be a very short season this year, unfortunately. As of April 1, the snow pack is at 71% of normal (northern CA), 68% (central Sierra), 46% (southern Sierra). Rain is at 52% (north), 54% (central), 40% (south). It has been a dismal year. This is the second year in a row of drought. Are we heading back into a prolonged drought period again? I sure hope not. Please pray for much rain next year.

The snow is just starting to melt now so I wanted to head up into a higher elevation this week, above 4000 ft. Well, I ended up being a bit below 4000 and unfortunately that meant more poison oak. Sigh.

For this hike, I first saw this waterfall about 12 years ago. I climbed up on the opposite ridge and could only see an obscured long distance view of it. In retrospect, I have no idea why I even bothered to climb the ridge because I should have known it would not be a good view. Since that time I’ve been wondering how I could get close to it, if it was even possible. I had some ideas. The King Fire in 2014 put a delay into those plans, though as it turned out I should have tried to do this one a couple years ago. (keep reading and I will explain).

You won’t be finding this hike on AllTrails. I find it funny that people will only look on AllTrails and nowhere else for hikes. Not every hike is on it! I have so many hikes on waterfallswest.com that you will not find on any other site. This one is not easy, however. The hike is 6 miles one way with an elevation loss of about 1600 ft., so it is similar to the Upper Shirttail Creek Falls hike I did a couple weeks ago, yet this one was much much harder. The last part is a big drop of 500 ft. down to the creek (again, similar to Shirttail). It took a full hour to get down to the bottom. It was hard! The brush after the King Fire has now grown up immensely. It was very brushy, especially near the top of the ridge. At first, I thought I was done for. There is no way I was getting through all that brush, but I persevered and I found a path.  It was very steep and there were a lot of fallen trees from the fire. I had to be careful with that but the brush was still the biggest problem. The brush got better near the bottom but that is where the poison oak made a presence (in abundance). I really wanted to be done with the poison oak for this year. Sign. Maybe next week.

I finally made it down to the creek and the bottom of the main section of the waterfall, a magnificent 161 ft. drop. Onion Creek Falls is absolutely glorious! It was so awesome finally getting up close to this beauty and well worth the effort. But I still had to climb back up the mountain. It was 5PM and it took an hour to climb back up to the road. I was planning to eat my dinner back at the road but I should have eaten at the bottom. I almost bonked. The climb was so incredibly difficult. I rested when I got back up to the road and tried to eat. Now I still had 5 miles to hike and another 1100 ft. to get back to the car. It was well after dark when I finally got back (almost 9PM!), so it was much later than I had hoped and I almost bonked again as I finished the hike. This was a killer tough hike. Was it worth it? Heck yes. It was an awesome day in Eldorado National Forest.

The first time I came here, I did not go down to the bottom of the waterfall. I had thought that I would get a great view of it from the ridge but that turned out to be impossible. I went about halfway down the mountain and ran into a plethora of poison oak. I did get a partial view of the falls but I felt that I did not really bag the waterfall and I wanted to return again someday for another try.

This past weekend I returned with full intention of getting to the bottom of the waterfall.

It is a very long and difficult hike. There was a little bit of snow from the previous storm. I was surprised there was snow at all but it was only a couple inches, so it was not hard to walk through. When I got to the ridge I was already quite tired. I still had to go all the way down to the bottom, and then of course back up. I realize now why I went the wrong way the first time. It is very tricky to know the right direction to go and very easy to get lost. Once again, I started going down the wrong way (into the poison oak), but this time I corrected my direction and got over to where I was supposed to go down. There is less poison oak this way, but there still is a bit. It is STEEP! It is incredibly steep! I did not need to use my rope at all but the loose rocks made it very difficult and sketchy and there was quite a bit of slipping and sliding on the rocks, and hoping I would not start a landslide. It is a 600 ft. descent to the bottom. I made it down to the creek and still had to work my way upstream to the falls. This also was difficult and if there was a lot more water in the creek it would have been impossible. I had to climb up the rocks over a couple little cascades and had to put my feet in the water until I finally reached a good viewpoint of this glorious 212 ft. high waterfall. It was magnificent! Upper Shirttail Canyon Falls is into the bag machine!

I ate my lunch down at the waterfall. Relaxing. Resting. Finally it was time to climb back up the mountain. I was not looking forward to it. It was so hard. It took 3.5 hours to hike down and 3.5 hours to go back up to my car (plus about an hour down at the waterfall). Once again, I came across people shooting targets on the final section back to the car. They are so loud and ruined the last bit of my peaceful hike. I had hoped that since it was so late I would not see any of them, but no sir. And as usual I had to pick up all the trash they left behind, which (once again) was a lot. Why are these people so irresponsible. Argh.

Anyway, I had an amazing but very difficult day in Tahoe National Forest.

I was surprised there was no snow (or not much) at the trailhead at 5500 ft. elevation. I did not think I’d be able to drive up there, but when I looked at the satellite, I did not see much snow. Maybe this hike to Spruce Creek Falls would be a good one to do right now.

There was maybe just a couple inches of snow so it was easy to drive to the trailhead. It was icy, however. I had fun sliding along the ice as I hiked down the road. Coming back up later would be a bit more difficult. The road crosses Spruce Creek a few minutes into the hike. It was just barely flowing. I really considered just turning back now. But I drove all the way up here. I figured I should at least do a hike down to where I need to get off the road and scramble down to the falls (3 miles of road walking). If the creek is just a trickle down there, then I would not do the off trail (very difficult) part of the hike.

It is about a 1400 ft. descent down to the falls (900 on the road). When I got down to the end of the road, I could hear the creek flowing much better (I could not see it from the road). Ok then, maybe I will continue as planned. I have tried this hike once before, but I found it too steep and cliffy. I returned this time with rope and with a better planned route. (so I thought). The cliffs get really crazy near the top of the waterfall. Cliff cliff, everywhere a cliff. There is no way down. But there is! I found a path leading down to the bottom of the lower tier of the falls. The last section was very steep and indeed I needed to use my rope for safety. I made it down successfully.

This lower tier of Spruce Creek Falls is 39 ft. high. It is quite nice, and you can see the upper tier in my photo. It is much bigger. Unfortunately, I could not find a way up to it. It is extremely sketchy and I did not have any more rope. I was also out of time. I will return in the spring with more rope and more time and more determination.

It was dark when I got back to my car at 5:30PM. It was a cliffy day in Tahoe National Forest.

Because of stupid COVID, we cannot go to Canada for Christmas as we normally do. I think this is the first year since we were married in 1999 that we are not going to Canada to visit my family. It is upsetting. We also had plans to go up there this past summer, which of course also got nixed. Those plans were moved to next summer, but it seems unlikely we will be able to go then either.

Anyway, I decided I still wanted to take two weeks of vacation this Christmas. We can’t go anywhere, so I want to do a lot of hiking. I have many hikes planned, possibly including a winter backpacking trip. Brrr.

My first hike was a bust. I have brand new snowshoes and wanted to try them out. I actually had a fantastic snowshoe hike, but I could not get down to the waterfall. It was too steep and dangerous in the snow. I should have known that, I don’t know what I was thinking. At least the snowshoes work well.

My second hike was a bust. I was trying to get to a new waterfall on Cherokee Creek, but it was just too darn brushy. I gave it a good effort, but just could not do it. I was bummed but I had one more hike planned on the same day. Would I strike out completely?

I was pretty sure I could get to the lower falls on Cherokee Creek, even though I did not know exactly where they were located. The issue was going to be if it was even 20 ft. high. I knew it would be close, but I just was not sure. Twenty feet is the minimum standard I use for categorizing waterfalls on my website.

It is a very easy hike and pretty much completely flat the entire way, following along the North Fork Yuba River. I saw a couple other groups of hikers on the trail, or rather one couple hiking, and one family biking. It’s definitely flat enough to bike. I also saw an abandoned tent. I just don’t understand people. You can backpack into a camping area with your big tent (it was big), but you cannot pack it out with you, so you just abandon it? Why???? I find this kind of thing so darn frustrating.

After a couple miles of hiking I arrived at Cherokee Creek. From there you need to go upstream. I figured there would be an obvious path and there was. This is (apparently) a popular swimming hole in the summer. There was one tricky spot in which a landslide destroyed the trail, and (of course) there was a dangerous drop-off. I managed to find a way past this. It would have sucked if this is what stopped me from getting to the falls. I arrived at the waterfall at 4pm. (I started at 2:30 but was taking my time, taking a lot of video and such). I could tell right away that the waterfall was not a big one, and definitely not much bigger than 20 feet. I measured it to be 23 ft. high. It is certainly a pretty little thing.

Sunset was at 4:45pm. This is the time I started back, and I was booting it, hiking as fast as I could. Almost all the hike back was in the dark, but I made good time and got back  to the car at 5:30pm. It was a good day in Tahoe National Forest.

I drove up to Lake Tahoe this weekend, hoping to hike up to Susie Lake and do some snowshoeing. Well. .. Fallen Leaf Lake Road was closed. I knew they close it in the winter when there is snow, but there is no snow yet. Also, the forest service website says the trailhead is open. So what the heck? Why is it closed now? I was a bit upset that I could not drive into the trailhead, but more upset that the forest service did not indicate the road was closed. It is a long drive from Sacramento to Lake Tahoe. What should I do now? The closure would add 8 miles of road walking to my hike and it would also mean I would be hiking back in the dark, but I could not think of a different hike that I wanted to do, so I decided to go for it anyway. I have done this before but there was a lot more snow at that time and snowshoes were required. Today, however, I decided to leave my snowshoes in the car because I did not want to carry them 8 miles and I figured I would not need them anyway. I would just go to Grass Lake instead of Susie Lake, so that should be very doable without snowshoes. Ummm, not quite.

I arrived at Upper Glen Alpine Falls (pictured here) about noon and had my lunch there. Surprisingly, it was in the shade so I was able to take some decent photos of it at noon. Well that’s good. Now I don’t have to come back here later in the day to take photos, so that will save a half hour of walking in the dark. It was a fantastic day so far. I was happy and very much enjoying God’s beautiful nature.

I continued on up to Grass Lake. I did not make it. There was a lot more snow than I expected, it was soft, and I was sinking in. It was getting to be quite dangerous. With snowshoes, I would have easily made it. I am so DUMB. I should have brought my snowshoes! Oh well. I turned back, stopping at Upper Glen Alpine Falls again to take some more photos.

I did not see anyone on the trail all day. No one wants to hike an additional 8 miles to go here. Except the mad man of course. When I got back to the road, however, I saw quite a few people walking up the road. They were all parked back at the gate where I did. I was very surprised to see so many people because it was late in the day. All these people would be hiking back to their cars in the dark. I barely made it back before dark myself and they were all quite a way behind me.

When I got back to the gate, I found that the gate was open. Well this is very strange. All the cars were parked on the other side of the gate as I was, so why didn’t they just drive up the road if the gate was open? Why was the gate closed in the morning anyway? Why was it open now? What am I missing here? This makes no sense.

There was an even stranger thing. My car was in the middle of the road! What? I had parked on a hill, so obviously I made sure to set the parking break, however, it was icy. My back wheels were on ice, but my front wheels were on solid ground; I figured it would not be a problem. It looked fine to me. Apparently not! My car must’ve slid down on the ice to the road. Thankfully, it did not block the road but it was sticking out a little bit. It looked like a very bad parking job. I am so DUMBER. Anyway, no damage done. I drove home. It was a great day at Lake Tahoe.