Leon Turnbull Photography

Too hot in the valley. Let’s head up into the mountains, I say to my son. Okay, he says reluctantly. As if he had a choice.

It is a short hike to this waterfall, if you have a four wheel drive. You can almost drive to it, but the road is quite rough, so we walked more than I expected to. I have not been to this falls before, but I’ve been wanting to go for quite awhile now, and it seemed a good one to do since I did not want to do much of a hike in the hot weather. The mosquitoes were out so we quickly lathered ourselves in juice. That kept them away for a short time, but they kept coming back to munch on us. I might need to get some better repellent.

We climbed up on an open rocky area in front of the falls where I took my photos. The mosquitoes were not at this spot, thanks to a little breeze. Good thing.

After this I suggested we climb to the top of the falls. I thought there might be more falls above this. I said to Jadon we will need to go around, it is too steep and cliffy right beside the waterfall. He said, what are you talking about. It is easier to go straight up. And so he did. I followed him up. He was right, of course, it was no problem to go straight up. We found a couple smaller cascades, then continued up to Crater Lake. Not the one in Oregon. Obviously.

I have never been to this lake before. I will be back. Probably within a week. What a marvelous and pretty lake, and the surrounding area is spectacular. We did not have enough time to explore it all, and that is why I need to come back here soon. You will see why later.

We proceeded to the outlet of the lake, where we found a family on the other side of the creek with a OHV. Did you cross that creek in your OHV, I asked one of the kids there. Yes, my dad did. He is coming back now. We watched as he crossed back through the stream. The water here was more than 2 feet in depth, possibly close to 3 feet. Another kid was in the backseat screaming in excitement. After he crossed, I said to him, I gotta get me one of those things. What fun!

There was a strong breeze at the outlet stream. It felt so darn nice and kept the mosquitoes away. I was thinking very strongly that I could just stay right there all night long with that awesome breeze. But alas, we had to hike back down to our car before it got dark.

Along the way we passed a campsite with a dog. The dog came out to greet us, and he was about the friendliest dog I’ve ever seen. Its entire body wagged, not just its tail. It gave new meaning to the term “wag the dog”. He followed us up the road for about a half mile, and had no intention of going back to its owners. I’m sure it would have followed us all the way to our car. I told the dog to “go back”, “go home”, “sit”, “stay”. Nothing doing. He kept following us. Finally I told Jadon to go on ahead, and I would walk back to the campsite with the dog. But he kept following Jadon up the road, and would not come with me. Finally I enticed it to come with me (with a bit of cold meat perhaps?). When we got back to the campsite, the owners were nowhere to be seen. I yelled out “hello!”. Where were they all? I waited for awhile, then I heard someone chopping wood and yelled out again “can you please call back your dog?”. No wonder the dog wanted so badly to come with us, having owners that did not care one iota about him or where he was. I think we should have let the dog follow us back to our car, and took it home with us. Yes, my wife would have really liked that. Seriously.

Out for a stroll this weekend, and I was up at 3AM. Ouch. I arrived at the trailhead at 5:30AM. This is the world famous and extremely popular Rubicon Trail. The parking lot was jam pack full with cars and trailers. Ouch. I expected there to be people and jeeps on the trail, but not this many. It is summertime. I had actually wanted to come on this hike much earlier in the spring, but this was the first chance I had this year. It was time to go see Miller Creek Falls. It was Miller Time. I managed to squeeze my SUV into one of the only remaining spaces.

Well hopefully I would not see any jeeps on the trail. Yeah right. Going into the waterfall, indeed I did not see anyone, but coming back? Hmph. As for the weather, it was a cool and very pleasant 37 degrees. A nice start to the day, but it would warm up quickly, and with the warmth would come nightmarish mosquitoes. I was hoping to at least get to the waterfall before the mosquitoes came out to play. I did not quite make it.

Along the way, I pass 4 alpine lakes. If lakes can be ugly (can they be ugly?) then these ones were ugly. Well, the third one was quite nice, but the others were just completely covered with vegetation, like a big bog. They were not very scenic. But anyway, I continued on. I could see the creek had quite a bit of water, which was a good sign, as I was not sure how well the falls would still be flowing since it is already summer. Now I just had to get down there before the sun. If I stopped at all, the skeeters were over me. Needless  to say I only stopped the one time.

It was a pretty easy hike until I got to the top of the waterfall. From there I could see nothing but cliff. How would I get down? I hummed and hawed, I was running out of time, I just decided to go for it. But carefully go for it, of course. No need to jump off the cliff. There was a perfect little ledge that took me right to the bottom of the waterfall. If it were not there, I don’t think it would be possible to get to the falls. Thank you ledge. Or rather, thank you God for putting it there. 

Miller Creek Falls is gorgeous, 54 feet high in total. And there was even more than this one. It is a very awesome little creek and I will be back here someday to explore it fully.

I lathered up in Skeeter juice for the hike back. Unfortunately, I did see quite a few jeeps coming up the trail. The first one was a Ranger, and he asked me where I was coming from. I believe he thought I was backpacking somewhere. I was wearing my big camera pack of course, and many people have mistaken it for a backpack. This Ranger will not be the last to do that. But if I was backpacking, then I would need a permit and I think that’s what he was wondering about. Actually, I did not know if I was in the wilderness or not at this point, and if so would I need a permit even for day hiking? I’ve been asked for them before when hiking in the Desolation Wilderness. I told him I was just on a day hike and down at the waterfall, all the while swatting the mosquitoes away from my face (he made me stop in a mosquito zone in order to talk to me). He let me go quickly, perhaps because he felt sorry for me, standing there swatting mosquitoes. I do wonder though if he even knew there was a waterfall down there.

After that I saw about 10,000 more jeeps and OHVs. I wondered where they all had parked, because the lot really was completely full when I had gotten there this morning. I hoped no one had blocked me in, keeping me stuck there all weekend. How nice would that be. By the time I got back to the car, I was thoroughly annoyed with them all for sure. For each one, I had to get off the road, stop and wait for them to pass, give them a polite wave with one hand, swatting mosquitoes with the other. I guess that is what you get for hiking on the single most popular jeep trail in the summertime, and on the weekend. Shame on me.

After work on Friday I took my son Jadon up the hill to go on an evening hike. It is rare he wants to go with me. I always ask him, and he almost always says no. I strongly suspect it is because I usually get up at bloody awful hours of the morning to go hiking. This time I would be going in the evening, and he said yes. Coincidence? Probably not.

Traffic was awful but we arrived at Squaw Valley Resort and started the hike in good time, however I underestimated just how long this hike would take, and I also grossly misjudged the off-trail section we would be doing. Off-trail section? There is no off-trail section, it is a fine, completely all on-trail hike up to Shirley Lake. Right? You forget who you are dealing with here. Well it was mostly on-trail, and although there are many indistinct parts, it is mostly marked and easy enough to follow, but it is still a tough uphill climb to the lake. There is a small waterfall along the trail that everybody stops and takes pictures of. I knew about this one of course. There is also a second small waterfall above it that I did not know about. It is difficult to get down to it and photograph it, and that is probably why I had not seen photos of it. Nonetheless I was able to get down to it without too much difficulty, but Jadon elected to stay up on the trail, safe and sound. Good choice. Nonetheless, I managed to avoid falling off the scary rock overlook.

Besides these two falls, there are two other bigger waterfalls in the area and this was my major reason to come on this hike, and this is why I was so bummed. The first one is off-trail. It looked so easy on Google Earth, but it turned out to be very brushy, much too brushy, with a difficult creek crossing as well. We tried, and maybe if I was by myself I would have tried to smash through that brush and cross the creek, but it was just really difficult. Because of all the off-trail shenanigans, it was 7PM by the time we got up to Shirley Lake. We had to go back down. As it is, we barely made it back to the car before dark, there is no way we could have continued to the second big waterfall. So yes, I got to see a couple small waterfalls I had not seen before, and Jadon and I had a fun time hiking together, but I was definitely bummed that I could not get to either of the big waterfalls. I will certainly be  back again someday to attempt to smash through that brush.

I tried a new hike this weekend and it was almost really great. That is, to hike up above Horsetail Falls in the Desolation Wilderness without actually hiking up Horsetail Falls. That could be a challenge, yes? But I hate, really hate, the route up alongside Horsetail Falls. Of course I have done it before many times, but it freaks me out now in my old age. So how can I get up to the amazing area above Horsetail Falls without going up Horsetail Falls? The answer: Rocky Canyon.

Rocky Canyon is a steeper route and more difficult, but not so crazy treacherous and dangerous. In fact, it is not dangerous at all. The only problem is the brush, the awful brush. Indeed, I almost turned back, but persevered and found the way through, and after that the rest of the hike was easy smeasy.

However, I arrived at my destination, Ropi Lake, much too late. According to my calculations, the waterfall still should’ve been in shade, but it was clearly not. This is the second time in a row that the Photographers Ephemeris program screwed me over. Has anyone else found issues with this program recently? Well, I’m sure it was user error, and I will not be making this mistake again (he says so confidently). The sun still should have been behind the ridge, but it was well above it, for at least an hour or more, and I was not that late in arriving. Anyhow, I climbed out on the very slippery and dangerous logs to get in the middle of the creek, in order to get this shot of the lower part of the falls, which is certainly not a particularly good one.

On the way back, I passed through a campsite. The backpackers were gone off on a day hike, I saw them heading in the direction of Pyramid Peak. What amused me about their camp site, was the way they hung their food. It was horrendous! The food was strapped on a rope over a branch, only a couple feet off the ground. It would not have been able to prevent squirrels from getting into it, let alone bears. Seriously, you may as well just lay out all your food on a table cloth complete with napkins and utensils for the bears. A royal feast for them I would say.

I did hike back down along Horsetail Falls. I have never had trouble before going down that route, only going up. I knew there was one sketchy section but I was certain that I would have no troubles getting down. But alas, I was wrong again. There were a couple other sketchy sections that I did not remember even seeing before. One of them in particular was pretty crazy to get down safely. It was also darn hard on my old knees. Well, I did make it down and all in one piece. I’m definitely not too excited about trying that again. I would definitely do the Rocky Canyon route again though, if I can figure out a way to get around that awful brush.

Our company moved its office to Roseville this week and I must say I’m hating the commute thus far. I used to work 10 minutes from home. Not anymore. The traffic is not so bad but it’s all the darn lights. There are about 5000 of them and I swear the city has programmed them so it is impossible to hit any of them green. Argh.

It also means it is now too difficult to get to the south shore of Tahoe after work on Friday. Going to the north shore is about the only option. So that’s what I did.

It was raining hard when I got to Truckee but by the time I started my hike it was all done. A nice sunset over looking the lake would sure be nice. I haven’t had good luck up here for sunsets this year. I hiked up the Tahoe Rim Trail (first time I’ve ever been on this trail). The info I read said there were good views of the lake on this section. I found nada. I think I would have had to walk a lot farther on the trail to see any, so I decided to climb up to the top of Barker Peak. Surely there would be a good view from up there. Instead I found a big old ridge blocking my view. I could only see a partial view of the lake and it didn’t seem worth staying up there for sunset. I did not like it. Plus I was way off the main trail and I did not have my GPS. Hiking back in the dark might be big trouble.

So I ran back down the mountain to the car as fast as my chubby legs would take me, and drove back down to lakeside, arriving there just before sunset. There was a dock there which I walked out on, but there was not much color out over the lake. Bummer. Then I looked behind me and saw some spectacular color. I was on the wrong side of the lake. Doh! I should have gone to the east side. No time to do that now. I tried to take some shots anyway. It was pretty nice but the angle was not great. The weird thing was there was another photographer there on the dock shooting the nice color but he was standing right along the shore, a far worse angle. Why didn’t he pass by me to get a better angle? Strange. Anyway the color was all done so I packed up and made the long drive home.