Leon Turnbull Photography

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

This is a little 12 ft. waterfall I found on Humbug Creek near Downieville, all part of my most recent grand adventure. I was looking for a big waterfall on Humbug Creek, and indeed I thought I had. But not exactly.

My adventure started off on the easy and beautifully maintained North Yuba Trail, following the North Yuba River up river. But shortly, we come to the Humbug Creek confluence, and that is where things get interesting. My goal is to work my way up Humbug Creek to the waterfall, which is hidden way back in the steep narrow canyon. There is no trail up Humbug Creek. Indeed there is no way to get up Humbug Creek, from creek level. I had to go off trail, straight up the mountain. Poison oak was very plentiful through here. As I climbed, I noticed a trail heading off to the right, traversing the cliffs along Humbug Creek. Obviously, other people had been up here before. I decided to follow this trail. I guess you could say that was a mistake. Though not totally, because it led to this small 12 ft. high waterfall on Humbug Creek. From the trail looking down on the waterfall, it seemed that it was much bigger than 12 ft. Because of this, I decided to try to get down to it, even though it was not my primary destination for the morning. It was a treacherous descent to say the least. But I made it, and once I got down I realized how small the waterfall was. It was a pretty one, but I was hoping for something bigger, so I took my photos and went back up to the trail (it was much easier going back up). The trail continued on, up Humbug Creek, so I decided to keep following it. This was my biggest mistake of the day. Eventually, the trail came to a dead end. The only way out? Straight up the mountain. About 1000 ft. up to the top. It was a tough climb to say the least, but fortunately it was not a sheer cliff, and it was climbable, though there were a couple tricky spots. It took me quite awhile to get up to the top. At the top, and after a good rest, I was able to continue going up to where I had initially planned to go. I was still going up the mountain, but the going was easier now, and there was a trail as well. I came to a rocky area, and I could see the very top of the mountain, which was straight up the rock. But I did not need to go up that section, as I came to a viewpoint of a towering waterfall across the canyon. It was about 450 ft. high, dropping in many tiers, tumbling this way and that down the mountain on the other side. The flow in the creek was fairly high, and it was a magnificent waterfall. I thought this was Humbug Creek and that this was my waterfall that I was searching for. Only when I got home did I realize it was Little Humbug Creek, not Humbug Creek. There was still another waterfall on Humbug Creek that I missed. If I had tried to continue, it would have been another 1000 ft. descent to the bottom of the canyon (and then back up), and the terrain was a lot steeper here, so I am not sure it would have even been possible. Nonetheless, you know I will return here someday and see if it can be done. I must find Humbug Creek Falls.

It was somewhat sunny, but I do have pictures of the waterfall on Little Humbug Creek:
http://www.waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=1642

You may think I was lost out in the middle of nowhere getting to this small waterfall in a remote area of Eldorado National Forest. The name of this creek is appropriately Lost Canyon Creek. I was not lost, though maybe a bit crazy being out here. Actually, I was trying to find a waterfall on a different creek (Slab Creek).  I did not find a waterfall on that creek, however I do still think there are waterfalls on Slab Creek, and someday I will get back out here and find them.

It is a very long drive out to this area. It is probably less than 60 miles from where I live in Folsom, but it is a slow, winding road, and it took a lot longer than I anticipated. In addition, the road had a large number of potholes, and there were  a lot of fallen trees in the road. This made for very slow going as I constantly had to slow right down to drive around all the obstacles. And after striking out in my search along Slab Creek, I really did not want to go home empty handed. And fortunately, I just happened to see this small waterfall on Lost Canyon Creek as I was hiking up Slab Creek. Admittedly, it is not much of a waterfall, and not very photogenic with all the fallen logs and branches in the way. But it was still better than going home empty handed.

http://www.waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=1641