Leon Turnbull Photography

Nothing new to report this weekend. Our daughter had her first dance performance of the season this weekend at the Folsom Community Center. Their group name is the Diamond Girls and they sure rocked! We are looking forward to this year for her, and she has a number of dance performances. She will be dancing at a pre-game show at the Sacramento Kings NBA game vs. Chicago Bulls in March. I am quite excited about this! 🙂

Anyway, here is yet another view of Lower Horsetail Falls from a couple months ago. I really liked that crack in the foreground and tried to use it prominently in this shot.

After my last day of work at my old job and getting off early, I drove back up to Fuller Lake in order to get back to Fordyce Falls. My plan was to bike the trail this time in hopes of saving a lot of time and in hopes of it being much easier. It is 4 miles one way, and it took me about 1.5 hours to hike it. When I hiked it, the terrain seemed quite bike-able, except for a couple big hills, and I know other people frequently bike this trail. I figured biking to the falls would take 45 minutes max. I could get there in good time, shoot both of the waterfalls, and be back at the car by dark. Easily.

So how long do you think it actually took me to bike to the falls? It took 1.5 hours, essentially the exact amount of time to hike it. It was also very difficult and much harder; it would have been easier to hike the trail. How is this even possible? Well, the terrain is actually extremely technical (which is not something I figured it would be, after hiking it). I was constantly having to get off the bike and walk sections, due to steepness, or very rocky terrain, or other obstacles. There were certainly long sections where I could go at a good fast clip, but the technical sections slowed me down way too much and too often.

Wow, when I got to Fordyce Falls I realized I had not much time to shoot the waterfalls if I wanted to get back to the car before dark. I certainly had no time to shoot both waterfalls. I decided to skip the lower Split Falls, and just shoot the upper Fordyce Falls. I waited until the waterfall got into the shade at 6:45PM, took my shot, then quickly packed up my bike and headed back at 6:50PM. It seemed to take longer to bike back and it was well past dark when I arrived back at the car. Fortunately I had a headlamp, but I did not get back to the car until about 8:15AM. I was dog tired but I made it.

One more from Palisade Falls. To get to this spot, you need to scramble down to the river from the viewpoint, then walk along the rock edge to get to an outcropping with this view of the falls. It required me to take one step into the water. It was not difficult, but would have been impossible to do earlier in the summer when the river is higher. That is one good thing about the low flow in the river, because this was a sweet spot to get to.

In other news, I start my new job next Monday. Yay. What does this mean to me? No more lousy commute. Much better pay. I am really looking forward to it, and this opportunity just fell right into my lap, after much prayer. Clearly this was all God’s doing. He is so good.

Not many waterfalls flow year round in California, but late in the year you can still find some flowing strong, if you know where to look. Fordyce Creek is one such creek that may be spunky in late summer, and that is because it is controlled by a dam (at Fordyce Lake). If PG&E is letting water out of the dam, then the creek will of course be flowing well, and there are a couple small waterfalls on this creek that are worth going to see. With the gauge reading 150 cubic feet per second, Fordyce Creek became my adventure for the weekend.

For most everything now at home I use my new iMac, but there are still a couple things I use my old PC for, and one of these is for my GPS and topo maps because the GPS will not work on the Mac (which is lame, but that’s another story). Well, the old PC finally kicked the bucket this week, and that means I am not able to transfer tracks and maps to and from my GPS, and that means I was not able to use my GPS this weekend. That is a lie, because I did manually transfer some waypoints into the GPS and that would prevent me from getting completely lost, I hoped. Another reason I picked Fordyce Creek is that I have done this hike before, so it would not be likely I would get lost anyway.

So anyway, I arrived at Fuller Lake in the dark and began my hike. The trail goes from Fuller Lake down to Lake Spaulding, then to the end of Lake Spaulding where Fordyce Creek dumps into it, then continues a way up the creek to the falls. It is 4 miles one way but is not terribly difficult. The trail does cut across the bottom of a man-made waterfall from Fuller Lake and normally this creek is completely dry, but it just so happened that PG&E was releasing water from Fuller Lake, and this creek and waterfall was roaring when I arrived this morning. There was no way to cross the creek, and I thought my hike was over already. It was still dark, so I decided to do some exploring down stream from the waterfall to see if there was any place to cross, and lo and behold I found a footbridge which I did not know existed. I now had a choice: I could continue across the bridge and get on up to Fordyce Falls as originally planned. Or I could go back and photograph the man-made waterfall from Fuller Lake, which I have not photographed before. I would not be able to do both (I thought). I decided to go back and shoot Fuller Lake Falls. It was very difficult to photograph because of the intense mist and blowing branches in the wind. I am not sure but I doubt if any of my photos turned out, so I may or may not share any of them. After shooting that waterfall, I decided to hike up to Fordyce Creek anyway. I thought there might still be a small chance the waterfall would be in shade, so I hiked as fast as I possibly could, even running on the down hill sections.

I arrived at Split Falls (the first of two small waterfalls on Fordyce Creek) a little bit after 8AM (which was about 30-45 minutes later than I wanted). The top of the falls was in the sun, but most of it was still in shade, so I made my way down to creekside and took some photos. This one did not really turn out too bad, and I was quite happy that I was able to get here before it was too late. The last time I was here, the creek was flowing at about 250 cfs, so at only 150 cfs today, I figured the flow would be substantially and noticeably lower. But instead Split Falls looked exactly the same as when I was here last time. Very strange, I thought. However, when I got up to the upper falls (Fordyce Falls), I could easily see there that the flow in the creek was a lot less than before. I did not shoot that one because it was in full sun.

I was very tired from the running and hurrying, so I decided to head back instead of continuing up the trail as I initially planned to do. I took my time, and made a couple rest stops on the way. When I got back to the footbridge over the man-made stream, I found that they had shut off the tap at Fuller Lake, and the creek was now dry! Very strange indeed. I guess when the warning sign says to beware that the creek level may change at any moment, they really mean it!

Here’s another view of Palisade Falls. I’m looking forward to the long weekend, and going on another hike or two, though it won’t be anything as awesome as Palisade Falls. But it is always nice to get out and enjoy the great outdoors and beauty of God’s creation.