Leon Turnbull Photography

On Good Friday our church was having an all night prayer vigil. They wanted people to sign up throughout the night to come to the church for 30 minutes to pray. I signed up for 4AM. I know what you are thinking. I am nuts! But I had a plan, and it was that afterwards, I would drive on up to Lake Tahoe to catch the sunrise at Eagle Falls. It was a great plan! But as usual, God had a different plan in mind for me. His plan started out with heavy overcast clouds in the forecast over Tahoe and snow/rain showers. I could see during the day on Friday that my great sunrise plan was not going to work out too well, so I nixed that idea, and decided that instead I would just go on a hike after the prayer vigil up on Ice House Rd. And since it was overcast, I would not need to worry about hurrying up there to get there before sunrise. And in doing so, I would be able to spend more time in prayer at church. Exactly what God wanted! Funny that.

Anyway, Jay Bird Canyon Falls was my first destination of the day, and I ended up arriving not too long after sunrise. It had crazy flow! Although it is a very tall waterfall (173 ft. high), the creek is small, and usually the waterfall is just a nice, pretty, dainty, thin flowing waterfall. Today it was a 173 ft. high monster! The entire amphitheatre where it drops into was full of mist from the falls. There was not a dry spot to be had to take a photo. I got completely drenched as I approached closer to the waterfall, and the mist was freezing cold from snow melt as well. I could not find any place to take a photo (even up on the ridge opposite the falls was full of mist). Well, it was certainly an awesome experience, and I take it as a very good sign for things to come this spring. If this small waterfall (in terms of creek size) had such a powerful flow, what are other waterfalls (such as Yosemite) going to be like this spring? They will certainly be amazingly awesome for sure. I suppose you are wondering where I did take this photo. Perhaps especially if you have been here before and do not know where this spot is. Obviously it was taken from further back. Not from the road. It is kind of a secret, so I’ll leave it to you to figure out.

More info on Jay Bird Canyon Falls:
http://www.waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=218

This is Lower Pennyweight Falls in Colfax, 22 ft. high. I went here after work last week. With the flow in the creek so much reduced, it was pretty easy to rock hop across the creek and up to the falls. It certainly would be nicer with a bit more flow. However, it was still very nice, and I enjoyed my time and solitude at these falls on this particular evening.

Saturday morning I ventured out on yet another incredibly crazy and difficult hike.

In a certain rafting book that I have, it mentions a “beautiful waterfall” in Blind Canyon on the Middle Fork American River. Rafting or kayaking is not my cup of tea, and so I have always wondered it was possible to hike to this waterfall instead of raft/kayak. I decided to find out. And the answer is yes. But it is certainly a very difficult hike.

It did not help that I went down the wrong way. Namely, straight down a cliff. You see, there is a mining road leading down to the river from Mosquito Rd near Foresthill. Unfortunately, it crosses private property. The last time I tried that a few years ago, I saw plenty of no trespassing signs indicating that you could not continue on the road. I do believe it is a public road, so I do not really understand how it can cross private property like this. Anyway, I needed to look for an alternate route, so I decided to park along Mosquito Rd and descend the ridge into the canyon. Unfortunately, it was very very steep, much steeper than I thought it would be. I had to be extremely slow and careful. It also seems like this is the place where everyone dumps their garbage over the cliff. I had to walk by a lot of trash, appliances, even a couple very old cars. Humph. I finally made it down to that mining road. From there, I just followed it down and then cut over on another trail over to Blind Canyon. This other trail was surprisingly well traveled. I was not expecting that due to the difficulty of the hike. There was also a lot of poison oak and ticks down near the bottom. Eck. And double eck. But on the bright side, there were some nice wildflowers along the trail too.

The waterfall turned out to be only a small one, 16 ft. high. I was hoping for something quite a lot bigger. But the book was right. It certainly was a very “beautiful” little falls, stair stepping down the rock. And I think it would be even more impressive with a lot more water flowing in the creek.

On the way back up, I decided to keep going straight back up the mining road all the way to the top, instead of trying to scale that cliff back up again. I was much too tired to try doing that. I was just hoping I would not run into anyone crossing over private property. However, I did not need to do that anyway. As I climbed up the road,  I saw another “trail” on my map, leading up to Mosquito Rd. where my car was. It was overgrown, but it was much much easier than the cliff and it bypassed the private property as well. This was the way I should have gone down in the first place. Well, now I know for next time.

More info on Blind Canyon Falls:
http://www.waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=458

Here is another view of Dutch Creek Falls. For my sunset shot, I was standing up on the ledge in the middle, right beside the falls. It does not look like much of a ledge from this angle. It just looks steep. And I suppose it is. 🙂 For this shot, I was standing up on a big rock. It was steep also.

More:
http://waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=459

I have been busy lately. Trying to get my new computer all figured out. Yes, I bought a new computer. Shockingly, it is a Macintosh computer. I have ALWAYS been a PC guy. So why on Earth would I ever be so dim witted as to purchase a Macintosh, you ask? Great question! The answer is an interesting but simple one. I am planning to write an iPhone app for my site, waterfallswest.com. Yes folks, the waterfallswest iPhone app is coming soon, hopefully within a couple months. Anyway, in order to make an iPhone app, you essentially MUST use a Mac, and since I needed a new computer anyway, I figured I may as well go all out and get a nice iMac computer with a nice monitor. So that is exactly what I did. I have been busy getting things set up on it (plus, I bought a new desk to put both the new and old computers on). Now everyone who is anyone (not named Gates) says that Mac is so great and so easy and so much better than PC. But my thoughts so far are exactly the opposite. I know I will eventually get used to the new things, but I have had a lot of growing pains thus far. It is not so easy or intuitive to navigate around Mac compared to PC. And for software that I was using on PC that worked so simply and easily, when I install the Mac version of it on Mac, it does not work at all, and I have had to do a lot of finagling to get things to work. It is not so simple and easy as advertised. At least that is my experience so far.

Anyway, onto to better things. And that is the monitor, which IS A WHOLE LOT better than my old monitor. This is the first photo I processed on the new computer. It looks so crisp and sharp and perfect on the new monitor. On my old monitor, it looks just ok, but rather on the dull side. So I am wondering how it looks on everyone else’s monitor (my old one is really not a great monitor, but it is what I have been using for the past few years).

But you may be wondering where this waterfall is, because you have certainly never heard of it before. Correct? This is Alder Creek Falls, near Kyburz. It is a fabulous, rushing, 42 ft. high cascade on Alder Creek, but it is definitely rather tricky to get to this one. I have long suspected (but never confirmed until now) that there was a decent sized waterfall on Alder Creek. Once previously I tried to get to it following the west side of the creek, and although there is a trail there, it quickly disintegrates, and it becomes far too brushy and steep to continue on that side. This time, I wanted to try following the east side. There is a bit of a private property issue on the east side of the creek, but I bypassed that without “too” much difficulty. The waterfall on Alder Creek is exactly where I anticipated it to be (that in itself is somewhat miraculous). It is, however, very unfortunately, very difficult to get down to. In fact, it is downright impossible to get to the bottom of the falls (unless you happen to be Superman). It is also pretty much impossible to photograph completely, due to overhanging tree branches in the way. I was standing on the edge of a rather large cliff, and trying to photograph it. The upper section in isolation, shown here, is a bit easier to photograph. This is just the top part of the falls, which is about half of it (20 ft.). I did take another photo showing a bit more of it, and it is on my website page for this waterfall, but I liked this photo much better.

In addition to Alder Creek Falls, I found more smaller cascades along Alder Creek, and another nice waterfall on Screech Owl Canyon Creek. All in all, it was a fantastic morning near Kyburz.

http://www.waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=702
http://www.waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=701