Leon Turnbull Photography

After getting down to the base of Cascade Falls, I boogied on upstream of that big cascade in search of more goodies. And I found this little surprise.

There is no trail upstream but there was a well worn path, and obviously many people have been up this way before. It is not difficult and actually quite fun, involving rock hopping across the creek, and zipping up and over the granite rock, and through the occasional manzanita. I was not expecting to find much of anything here, and although I suspected there might be a small waterfall, I thought it more likely there was nothing. Imagine my surprise. This lower tier I measured to be 37 ft. high (although it seemed more like 25ish feet to my eye). It is a very pretty cascade. Considering that I am certainly not the first to see this little falls, I am shocked that I have never seen any photos of it before, and that no one else has ever documented it before. Although much smaller than the big waterfall downstream, it is nothing to sneeze at. And there is more! I scrambled up on the left side of the falls, and I found another pretty little 15 ft. high waterfall. And there was even more! Above that one is another waterfall which is at least as big if not bigger than this lower falls. Unfortunately, I could not get to it from the left side of the stream, but I think it could be done from the other side. Unfortunately by this time it was only 30 minutes to sunset, and I still had to hike over a mile back to the car, plus it would have been a significant effort to get up on the other side. But I will definitely be back. Very soon.

Friday evening’s adventure saw me off to Lake Tahoe after work. Why you ask? Waterfalls of course. But the waterfalls are not flowing anymore you say? Not exactly. There is actually still a bit of snow in the mountains but definitely the creeks are on their way out for the year.

My plan: Cascade Falls. You can see the waterfall from Emerald Bay Road before you get to the trailhead, and I examined it closely before starting on the hike. It was looking a bit meager from a distance without a doubt, but I decided to go anyway. Up close and personal, I thought it would be decent enough. And it was.

The trail was busy with plenty of other hikers, as expected. But no one would be thinking of going down to the base of Cascade Falls. Right? I had never been down to the bottom before, and this was my primary goal for the evening. How hard could it be? The waterfall only drops off a sheer 149 ft. cliff. No problems, right? Well of course, it would be a rather big problem if I went down to the bottom from the top of the cliff, but there is another way, my friends. And as it turned out, it was fairly easy. Also, fairly difficult. It was easy in the sense that it was not very steep and certainly not dangerous. It was difficult in the sense that it took quite a while and there is a lot of manzanita brush to negotiate. The “trail” winds its way down through the brush, down down down, almost all the way to the lake, then finally cuts back to the waterfall. The low flow in the waterfall allowed me to get up very close to it, which I certainly could not have done at higher flows. It was certainly quite decent.

So when I was here, I witnessed more full fledged Darwinism at work. Why does this always seem to happen at Lake Tahoe for me? Some dufus with three bushels short of a full load decided to scale down the sheer cliff beside the waterfall. I thought I was about to witness his certain destruction, and even tried to video it (but I messed up on that part – ugh). One missed step and he would have been done for, but he made it down the cliff safely. I expected him then to go over to the waterfall, but he disappeared and I did not see him again. He must have just gone back up the cliff in a spot where I could not see him, but that makes no sense at all. If you are going to risk your life and limb to scale down a sheer cliff (and not to mention when there is another easy path down to the bottom), why on earth would you not even go over to see the waterfall? I don’t get it. I suppose it is quite possible he was an expert climber and this was all child’s play to him, but I have seen too much stupidity in my lifetime.

Anyway, I decided to follow his lead, and went straight up the cliff to get to the top of the waterfall. Just kidding!!! I did go to the top of the waterfall though (the normal way), and then beyond. What I found next will amaze you. I am kidding again. Well, it might amaze you. Or surprise you. It did surprise me. But you will have to wait for my next post to find out what it was. Hint: it is probably a waterfall.

Here’s a different angle from Upper Burnett Canyon Falls. I have not been out hiking in a couple weeks now, and am desperately running out of photos to share. Hopefully, this weekend will be different and I will get some new pics. But it is starting to get warmer this week. And I’m sure the mosquitoes will be out in force, also. Sigh.

I was hoping for a good hike but not a killer hike this past weekend, so I chose Antoine Canyon, near Foresthill. This area was ravaged last year by the American Fire and I thought it might be interesting to hike down into it, perhaps it would be easier now after it has burned. Or perhaps harder? Either way, I have never hiked down on the south side of Foresthill Rd before, I always hike on the north side into the North Fork American River canyon. The south side drains into the North Fork of the Middle Fork American River, and is not too shabby either. It won’t be my last time down there for sure.

The road passed right through the burned area, and even though it was very early, there were workers blocking the road and my access. Ummm, can I get through here? I asked. You can “now”, they said, with the emphasis on the “now”. Ummm, will I be able to come back through here later? Who knows, they said, we are getting ready to cut down these burned trees. Yeah, that is quite reassuring, isn’t it. I was actually quite surprised that these guys would be out here working on a weekend, shocked even. I wasn’t sure if I should turn around, I didn’t want to be stuck in there all day, but I decided to take a chance on it. As it turned out, coming back through was not a problem at all, even though they were still busy working.

I parked the SUV and started my hike continuing down the dirt road. I could have driven further on the road, but I wanted to get a decent hike in this morning. I am certainly glad I did that, otherwise the hike would have been too short. I had calculated I had about 1.5 hours to make it down to the falls but the sun was already above the ridge line. Would I be too late? Well obviously I made it in time, otherwise I wouldn’t be too glad about it. I done good in my calculation this time. After 1.5 miles, you need to cut off the road and head down down down to the bottom of the canyon. It started off all right but got steeper as I went along. Much steeper. The last section to the creek was bordering on cliffy steep. One good thing is that I brought my rope, and I used it get down the last part to the creek. No problems getting down there with the rope (without a rope, it certainly might have been a problem). The bad thing is that I did not bring my water shoes. Stupid stupid stupid. This is the problem with having a bad back, and trying to save on precious weight on my hikes: I do not bring along items I think I might not need, and I was not thinking that I would be doing any creek wading this morning at all. However, I ended up down at the creek further downstream than I anticipated. Now I had to wade upstream to the waterfall. The creek was a bit deep in places, and the rocks were super slippery. It would have been very easy if I had my water shoes, but instead I had to wade upstream in my bare feet. I only slipped one time, but in the process, I managed to get my hiking boots (that I was carrying) completely soaked. Ugh.

Well I got up near the waterfall but there was a little cascade and small falls I still had to negotiate. I had to cross the creek again, climb up on a narrow ledge and continue climbing to get above the cascade. It was pretty fun, actually. Finally, I got up to the waterfall. It is quite a unique looking falls, and I think I will definitely be back to this one someday. I think it would be awesome at higher flows. The only trouble is that I would not be able to wade upstream at higher flows. It could be an interesting adventure.

I know that I am certainly not the first one to see this waterfall. There was a miner’s camp here, with a chair, gold panning equipment, and an axe that looked fairly new. Obviously someone has a claim down here. I wonder how he hikes down to it? It is not exactly easy to get down here, but it is certainly a quaint little place. Speaking of gold, when I climbed back out of the canyon up to the road, I saw three cars coming down the road, all filled with older guys, older than me, but not too much older. They said to me, Is that your SUV we saw parked way up the hill? Yes, it is. Wow, you hiked all the way down here, that is awesome, you are an iron man, amazing. (it is only 1.5 miles on an easy dirt road). When I told them I just hiked to the bottom of this steep canyon and back up, they practically fell down at my feet and worshiped me. I am kidding. But they were very much in awe, for sure. Well, it was a tough hike, but I have certainly done plenty of tougher ones. They all had metal detectors, and apparently, they were looking for gold along the hillside. It seemed rather odd to me. There are no streams up here, I would think they would more likely find gold down at the bottom of the canyon. But maybe they know something I don’t, it seemed like they had done this before. Well good luck to them, I guess. I certainly found my gold down at the canyon bottom.

Here’s another new one for ya folks, that’s two new ones in a row, and I must say I really really liked this waterfall, but it is pretty darn tough to get to. This is Upper Burnett Canyon Falls, and it is a sweet one, 83 feet high. A real beauty. It would be even more amazing at high flows, though I am not sure it would be possible to get there earlier in the year.

I have never attempted to get to this waterfall before, though I have known about it for at least a couple years. It has been listed on my website for that long, so if you are a subscriber to my website, then you would know about it as well, and perhaps you could have even made it here on your own before I got here. I know at least one friend of waterfallswest has done just that, earlier this year, but I am not sure the route that he took to get here. Probably not the same as myself, I guess I like things a bit on the spicy side.

I initially tried to come down a short route, more direct, to the waterfall, but then I came to the cliffy section, and it was just a bit too steep for comfort. Did I say the terrain in this drainage is crazy treacherous? Perhaps I could have made it down, but I chose to go back up and make my way over to Wilmont Canyon and down to Burnett Creek from there. It was steep there as well, but at least it was not cliffy, and I was able to make it all the way down. I did manage to squash a slug with my hand in the process. Not intentionally of course! That would be gross! However, I slipped and in order to catch myself I put my hand down quickly without looking where I was putting it. Right on top of Mr. Banana Slug. Sorry about that friend. Or unfriend. I’m just glad it was not a rattlesnake.

Anyway, once down at the creek, I had to make my way upstream to the waterfall. That could be very difficult. I soon came to a small waterfall, about 20 ft. high or so, with no way to continue except to climb back up the cliffs again in order to get up above this waterfall and then once again, back down to the creek. It was a bit too steep to get back down to the creek, however, but with my rope I made it down safely. Right through a truckload of poison oak. I was not expecting any oak down here. The elevation was 4000 ft. and poison oak does not usually grow above that elevation. However, there was certainly a bunch of it down around the creek level, and unfortunately no way to avoid the stuff. Ugh! Well no time to fret. I continued up to the waterfall. And it was a roaring success. I was extremely pleased to get here, but it took a lot longer than I thought it would. I had no time to make my way downstream and try to find any other waterfalls, which was my original intention. That will have to be saved for another day.

There are actually quite a few very elusive waterfalls in this drainage of the North Fork of the North Fork of the American River (NFNFAR for short), including an even bigger one on this same creek as well. I have not been to many of these waterfalls in this area: the cliffs in here are rather, shall we say, sheer, and the terrain is, shall we say, treacherous. That is the understatement of the year. But I will certainly keep trying.

I did not go back up Wilmont Canyon but instead took a different route back up the mountain, climbing the cliffs on the other side of the creek. It was actually a much better route. But it was still steep. The mosquitoes were out in force too. I could not stop to rest anywhere on the hike back because as soon as I stopped, I would be attacked. Big Ugh. But it was certainly a great day in the NFNFAR canyon.