Leon Turnbull Photography

You may be thinking after this weekend, we are going to have a great winter with above average precipitation! You may be thinking, we’ve had enough, stop raining already! As of right now, we have a snow pack about 200% of average. Surely that is enough. If you are thinking that, you would be wrong! Has the fat lady sung yet? No, she hasn’t. Remember last year? We were well above average in December and then we received almost zero precipitation in January, February and March. Nada. We ended up well below average for the year. Winter in California is four months, not one month. I read one report that said the same thing is going to happen this year, and already now it seems we are starting an extended dry period after this past weekend. What is my point? My point is: don’t get so excited yet. Keep praying for rain and snow. It’s not over yet.

Whenever I go to the Bay Area I am almost always disappointed with the waterfalls. About 90% of the time they have low and disappointing flows. I keep wanting to go back there because there are many waterfalls I still want to see. I should have gone to Oroville instead. However, I thought if I went on Saturday during the big storm, then the waterfalls would be good. They should be good. I had plans to see four falls, including three new ones. The first one was one I have been to before: Arroyo San Jose Falls.

As I started the easy hike up to the waterfall I was stunned: the creek was completely dry! We are in the middle of a huge storm and the creek is still dry from the summer? I just drove 2 hours to see this? This is a fairly decent sized creek. I expected this one at least to be flowing quite well. It was dry. Nonetheless, I continued on the hike. Well, I’m glad I did not turn back because as I came close to the waterfall, I found water in the creek. It was flowing up at the falls and then went underground. It was not great. But at least it was not dry.

There were a couple kids playing in the creek at the waterfall so I went off to the side to take photos. I did not want to disturb their play (I’m not that mean!), and also it was probably a better angle from the side anyway. After photographing this waterfall I decided to skip the other waterfalls. I did hike a bit more but in the end I figured it was not worth the effort. Considering the low flow in Arroyo San Jose, I knew the other creek would have been just a trickle at the very most. I will have to come back. Hopefully next time it will not be a disappointment.

This is Alamere Falls from the cliffs. You don’t want to stand too close to the edge here.

As of Feb. 1, the snow pack is 77% of normal (northern CA), 71% (central Sierra), 69% (southern Sierra). Rainfall is 63% (north), 53% (central), 55% (south). Things are looking very bleak this year. I like to be optimistic, however. Optimistic that we will catch up in the last half of February and March, and get back to average by the end of winter. Pray for snow, everyone.

The photo is Upper Alamere Falls.

I was very warm during the night. I had to shed layers and did not use all the warm clothes I brought for sleeping (my pack could have been a lot less than 43 pounds). Nekoda was also warm, but Tara and Jadon were cold. I’m not really sure why Tara was cold, but I know why Jadon was cold: He is so stubborn, that is why. I bought him a $70 sleeping bag liner so he would be warm at night. He did not use it. (Nekoda used the one I bought for her and she was warm). Instead, he carried a heavy blanket in his pack! (that must have added 5 pounds to his pack on top of the 20.5 pounds I weighed). This did not keep him warm whatsoever. But would his father (who has much backpacking experience) know what would be best ? No, of course not. He has to do his own thing. As for hiking boots, I made him try on my old boots before the trip. He said they fit perfectly fine. When we got to the trailhead, he said they did not fit. So what did he do? He took out all the shoelaces from the boots and hiked in the boots with no shoelaces! Was that better? Of course not. For the hike back, I could have let him suffer more, but I gave him my trail shoes (which I happened to have along with me), and those fit him better. (but he then had to carry the heavy hiking boots in his pack). No wonder he struggled with his pack, carrying those extra (and unnecessary) heavy items. As for Nekoda, she had to bring along all her makeup on the hike. I wonder how much weight all those items added. Sigh. Teenagers.

We woke up to a beautiful sunrise and glorious morning. Tons of little birds swarmed around us as we ate our breakfast, looking for scraps and trying to steal my food as I sat at the picnic table. Tara and I walked down to the ocean and watched the huge waves while my daughter Nekoda struggled to get up and out of her warm sleeping bag (and it WAS a big struggle). I think it was 9:45am by the time we got going, and it was a 6 mile hike back to the trailhead.

We saw many hikers on the trail going to Alamere Falls. I thought it was funny because many of them missed the turnoff to the waterfall. It is not marked, and if you miss it, you will go all the way to Wildcat camp and have to walk to Alamere Falls along the beach. But at high tide, (as it was), you will be skunked and not be able to reach Alamere Falls. I think it would clue in once you passed the bridge over Alamere Creek that you missed the turnoff, but most people we saw seemed to be unprepared and have no clue. We corrected some of the hikers we saw to go back the right way, but another thing is the tide. It was high tide and the waves would be (I know they were) crashing right up against the cliffs. That means it would be impossible to go down to the beach to see the waterfall. If you did go down, you could easily be swept out to sea. I wonder how many people have died down there at high tide. Bottom line, people: be prepared! Check your map! Check the tides! Go to my website and get proper information!

We got back to the car at 1PM. The parking lot was completely full. All those people hiked to Alamere Falls and could not even see it except from the top. We ate our lunch, and then made the long drive home. It was an awesome two day trip to Point Reyes National Seashore.

For the first time ever, our entire family went along on a backpacking trip with me. You heard me right, all four of us. It’s a miracle! How did I do it? It actually only took one word: ocean. If I say that word to my wife, she gets all giddy and excited. It probably took a few more words for my kids to agree.

I planned this trip months in advance. You have to do this because it is very difficult to get reservations at the Wildcat campground in Point Reyes National Seashore. Even a couple months in advance, everything was booked except for one last campsite, and that only for one night (Friday). All the stars need to align as well: the tides, and of course the weather. There are only a couple days a year where the tides come into alignment for what I wanted to do. As for the weather, we needed a lot of rain leading up to the event, and then nice weather on the day of the event. This is winter in California. Good luck with that madman. But that is exactly how it all panned out. We had quite a bit of rain in the two weeks before our trip (not nearly as much as I hoped – but it was enough). Then the weather showed a break for Friday. More rain was expected on Saturday afternoon. It turned out to be absolutely perfect timing. It was not even going to be very cold. I guess I could take credit for planning this out so perfect, but then I’d be struck by lightning. God is so good to us. Thank you Lord! I should also mention that I needed cloudy skies to take photos of this waterfall. That happened also. It was another miracle. Again, thank you God!

I was not able to do everything I wanted on this trip. We got a very late start. That is mostly because the visitor center does not open until 10AM! By the time we got our permits and got to the trailhead, it was 11:30AM before we started hiking. We did not arrive at Alamere Falls until 2PM, which is much later than I wanted. I had hoped to be at camp by this time, and then we’d have time to setup camp and hike up to Horsetail Falls before dark. Horsetail Falls is only accessible at very low tide and that was my primary goal for this trip, but we did not even get to camp until 5PM, and sunset is at 5:30PM, so going to Horsetail was out of the question. There is always next year. And next year, I will make sure I have enough time to get up to Horsetail.

We spent a lot of time at Alamere Falls, eating our lunch, and resting, and enjoying the waterfalls. Since it was Friday, there were not too many other people here (when we came back on Saturday, we passed a ton of people on the trail). It was beautiful and sunny for the hike up to the falls. We had grand views of the ocean. It clouded over in the afternoon by the time we arrived. Perfect. I went down to the beach to take my photos, while the rest of the crew rested up top. They were pretty tired, and so did not want to go down. It is a steep and tricky descent, and you need to be very careful, but I did not think it was too bad (it looks worse than it is). The rangers try (unsuccesfully) to dissuade people from coming down to Alamere Falls this way. They say there is poison oak (there is not), and that the descent is too dangerous (it is not – if you are careful). Don’t be stupid though and do something you are not prepared for and don’t have proper footwear for – such as going barefoot (we saw some hikers doing this – I could not believe it).

After photographing Alamere Falls, I went back up to get my crew. We would all have to descend to the beach with our packs on. With the tide going out, it would be an easy hike up the beach to Wildcat campground. We all made it down safely. Speaking of packs, you may want to know our pack weights: Leon: 43 pounds, Tara: 22.5 pounds, Jadon: 20.5 pounds, Nekoda: 14 pounds! You would think they would want to help the old man out and take on some more weight, but no sir! Actually, I did not mind taking on the extra weight. I wanted them all to be comfortable and to enjoy the trip as much as possible. Even with the light packs, they all had some difficulty.

The hike up the beach to Wildcat was the most enjoyable part of the entire hike. Too bad it was only 1 mile long. Along the way, we had a very close encounter with a huge elephant seal sleeping by the cliffs. We could hear it snoring as we passed by. We kept our distance (as you must), but it was a very cool experience.

We arrived at our campsite at 5PM. We setup camp, made our dinner and ate it in the dark, then we went to bed. There was only one other group in the entire campsite. Even though all the sites were booked (including one of the large group sites), no one was there. I am confused about this: If you book a campsite months in advance for January, what are you thinking? If it is not balmy and warm, you are going to cancel it? You do not get your money back if you cancel it. (and it is $20 – so not particularly cheap).  This is winter, people! Oh I am afraid it is only going to be 51 degrees, we just cannot go if it is that cold. If the weather was really awful then I would have canceled our trip also, but frankly I thought the weather we had was perfect. No rain, and the low temperature was only 51 degrees (which is very warm for January). There were showers forecast for overnight while we were sleeping, and I was expecting to have some, but we did not even get any showers at all. It was a fantastic day one in Point Reyes National Seashore.

February was just Febru-tastic! At the beginning of February, we were basically average across the board. As of Mar. 1, here is the update: Snow pack is 147% of normal (northern CA), 154% (Central Sierra), 146% (Southern Sierra). Rain fall is 133% of normal (north), 127% (central), and 122% (south). All is looking good, and the rain looks to be roaring into March. We should end up well above average for the year. But …. I just want to say one thing. Please do not complain about all the rain and snow we are getting! I’ve been hearing a lot of complaints recently. If you live in Lake Tahoe, and do not like the snow, why do you live there!!?? Do you want us to go into another huge drought?? Believe me, another drought is coming. Indeed, my prediction is that it will be even worse than the last one. We have basically four months out of the entire year where we get all (or most) of our rain and snow. (Dec-Mar). No one should be complaining about rain or snow that we get during these four months. We had a horrible start to the winter. Everyone was complaining about the lack of rain and upset about the fires that happened. Now people are complaining about the abundance of rain. Personally, I am praising God for all the rain (and we all should be). It is also important to note that Lake Oroville is *NOT* full yet and is BELOW normal (because they drained it after spillway incident a couple years ago). We still need a lot more rain in March to fill that reservoir. Hopefully we will get it in March.

Anyhow … speaking of rain… it was just a wee bit rainy on Saturday morning. I still wanted to hike, however, since I missed hiking last weekend. Going to Napa was not my first choice. However, everywhere else I thought of, it seemed to be just very heavy rain all morning. In Napa, supposedly, the rain was ending early. Indeed, when I woke up on Saturday,my weather app said it was just cloudy there. The rain had already stopped (supposedly). I decided to go to Napa.

As I drove down the freeway from Sacramento,there was a torrential downpour. In fact, the rain was extremely heavy for the entire drive. It seemed to be getting worse the further west I drove. Is it really not raining in Napa? Visibility was poor. I had to drive slow. It was ridiculous. By the time I got to Napa, it was still raining (not cloudy), but at least it was now just light rain. When I got to the trailhead, it was just misting. So I would not call that cloudy, but it was not rain either. It was really the perfect hiking weather.

I have not hiked to the Palisades before. I have been wanting to go. I heard there is a waterfall there. It should be great today.

It is a good trail. It is a very interesting trail. There is a rock maze along the way which you can walk through, and try to make it to the center of the maze. Whoever did this, must have worked for many many hours. Maybe it was aliens. I am not a fan of rock piles and cairns and such in the wilderness, but this was very cool. The trail is also very long. It is a hard trail. The hike was 3 miles longer than I expected, and the waterfall was much further than I thought. The elevation gain on the hike was much more than I thought (about 1800 ft. in total). All in all, it was a pretty darn tough hike. At least it was all on trail, but I do think I somehow managed to touch some poison oak.

I finally arrived at the waterfall. I was almost ready to give up, since I had been so much hiking further than expected. That would have sucked. I am glad I kept going. It is a very gorgeous 48 ft. high falls. I just wish that tree was not there at the bottom of it. I did go down to the bottom of the falls, which was not too difficult, and was pretty cool, but it was too difficult to photograph the waterfall from the bottom because of all the mist. There was no just good spot. The best place to photograph it was from the top. But here too, it was difficult. The cliffs are extremely unstable. I did not want to get very close to the edge. It was a big dropoff to the bottom of the cliff. Not fun.

It was a long and tough hike back to the car. Six hours total hiking there and back. Was it worth the effort? I would say, yes. It was a Febru-tastic day in Napa Valley.