Leon Turnbull Photography

Usually I like to go hiking every Saturday morning even if it is just a short hike close to home. But sometimes you just need to sleep in. I am sick with a bad cold this weekend, and sure did not feel like getting out to hike. My family is out of town for most of the weekend, so I am all by my lonesome (with the dog and the two meddlesome cats). The longest I went outside on Saturday was to take the garbage out. On Sunday morning, I had to get up at 6am to let Kaya dog outside. Then I went back to bed until 7:30am. When I got up again, I saw that the door was wide open. Bodie cat knows how to open it if it is not completely closed (smart cat). The two cats were both outside (they are indoor cats). Fortunately they did not go very far but I guess they had a good adventure with Kaya this morning. Sigh.

So I spent a lot of the day Saturday (besides watching hockey), studying my topo maps to find potential new waterfalls. I like doing this. Call me crazy. But I did find a few new possibilities close to home that I want to go check out. Possibly a couple real nice surprises too. I just need to wait for some rain now. It has been two months of no rain. We had just a small piddly little storm last week that did not even give us a foot of snow, and I don’t see anything now in the long range forecast into March. Double sigh.

This shot is from early January at Bear Ranch Creek Falls. I am surprised I had not posted this one before now. There is only possible spot to shoot this falls, and only one composition available. I have tried to look for other comps. This is it. Enjoy.

My wife’s birthday and my birthday are only one day apart. Perfectly convenient, is how I look at it. My wife hates it. Go figure. Mostly it is because I would rather celebrate the birthdays together, go out for dinner just once, have just one cake, etc. Convenience, you know. Well, I have learned by now that won’t work with her. Two dinners, two cakes, two celebrations.

This year my birthday fell on a Saturday. Yeah! That means I had the day all to myself and could go hiking anywhere I liked. Perfect. I suppose I could have picked a better location but I wanted to try to find something new, and that usually means the chances of actually finding something interesting are quite low, but mainly I just wanted to get out on a nice long hike. Actually I think I could have found something if it weren’t for the mud. A giant mud hole in the road prevented me from being able to drive to the trailhead. I was forced to turn around or else sink into oblivion. It is very strange too because we had so little rain this month. Where did all this mud come from? Some sort of wormhole to another dimension? Well not to be outdone just yet, I studied my maps and found a potential alternate route to my desired creek so I decided to try it. The new route found me hiking along logging roads in the direction of the creek I was trying to get to but in the end I was not able to get down to it due to too much brush and too much steepness. Nonetheless I did have a good long hike so I was not unhappy and it ended with a family dinner at Chicago Fire, the best pizza in California. Mmmmmm I would eat there every week if Tara would let me.

Despite the mud shenanigans on Saturday I would not be shut out for waterfalls this weekend. On Sunday we were planning to go to Phantom Falls on my wife’s birthday. She had never been there and has always said she really wanted to go to it so it was not hard to talk her into it on her birthday. We had the kids as well and so it was a great family outing together amongst the killer cows (we all survived) and the elusive salamander (which my wife unsuccessfully tried to chase over a waterfall). I was not expecting too much in flow on Table Mtn but I did think Phantom Falls would be a little better than it was. We sure do need a lot more rain here. Anyway Tara was really happy to finally get out to see this amazing waterfall and the kids did great on the four mile hike. It was a great morning on Table Mountain.

No I am not swearing. Really. The name of this creek is Jackass Creek, and the waterfall is Lower Jackass Creek Falls. Why they named the creek this, I have no idea.

I have been battling an awful cold since I returned from Canada. It has already caused me to miss a couple hiking opportunities. I still feel sick but I did not want to miss another hiking chance, so I got up early and headed out to Oroville/Highway 70. I had hopes to see at least five, perhaps eight waterfalls. I only saw three, the first being Lower Jackass Creek.

You can see this waterfall from across the North Fork Feather River along Hwy 70. I have wanted to try to get down to it for quite awhile. This was the weekend I did it. I’m not sure about the legalities of getting here, but that is another topic altogether. There was no one around. I’m sure it was fine. 🙂

It is actually a very gorgeous waterfall, 38 ft. high. A beautiful one to get right up close to. You cannot appreciate this waterfall from the other side of the river. I would have liked to spend more time here, but I had many other waterfalls to see this day. I’m sure I will be back here someday. I just hope I did not touch any poison oak down there.

Black Friday. As most of you know by now, this is my favorite day of the year to go hiking. No one is out, everyone is either out shopping or sleeping. It is definitely my kind of day out in the wilderness.

I decided to go up to McCloud and visit the McCloud River waterfalls. Again, I was trying to get to a new waterfall up there. Again, I did not have my GPS, having left it back home, and thus making it very difficult to find the way where I wanted to go. Again, I struck out, due to me taking the wrong route.

I was trying to get to Big Springs, which is near the Lower McCloud Falls, but way off the beaten path. With my makeshift GPS (ie. My iPhone app), I found a myriad of logging roads leading over to the area of Big Springs. There were a lot of them, and very wisely I marked the junction of every road so I could find my way back. With a GPS I really should not have needed to do this, but I am so glad I was smart enough to do it, or I might still be out there.

My approach to Big Springs took longer than I wanted, and as I neared the river, the road deteriorated into a very overgrown path, and then a steep descent down a rocky creek bed to get to the river. I had my dog Kaya with me, who is quite old now, but she managed to get down all right. The last step was a doozy and she would not let me carry her down it, but we found an alternate (bushy) way. When I got down to the river, I realized that we were nowhere near the waterfall. I came the wrong way. Big Springs was still far upriver. Kaya was already over-tired, and I was worried about her getting back up. I could glimpse the waterfall, but it would be a lot of bushwhacking to get over to it. It was also getting too late, the sun would be hitting the waterfall very shortly. If I was alone and if I had my proper GPS, I would have continued. But as it was, I decided to retreat and try again another day. I found a better way back up the creek bed, but Kaya was plump beat by the time we got back up to the dirt road. Now I had another problem, my iPhone app konked out on me. I still had 30% battery left on it, but it would not work. It is sure a darn good thing I marked all those road junctions. There is no way I would have remembered which way to turn at the jumble of intersecting logging roads that I had to negotiate to get back to the car.

Once back at the car, I went to Middle McCloud Falls. This waterfall would not be in the sun until 9:30AM so I knew I had some time to get to it. Even though Kaya was beat from the last hike, she really wanted to go down to the falls with me. It is a short and easy hike (though still a big descent), and of course I could not keep her from coming along. Just try to stop me from coming, she whined at me. Now, over the past few months or so, I have noticed other photographers’ images of Middle McCloud Falls, shooting the waterfall from way back, which in my opinion, is not a very good composition of the waterfall. I did not understand this at all, but I did not think it through clearly. Why are they shooting from so far back? There are far better compositions of this waterfall that can be had from close up. I have some really nice ones myself on my website. Well … now I know why. When I got down to the falls, there was just WAY TOO much mist near the waterfall, and this is because the river flow was so much higher. When I was here before, the river flow was lower, and there was not nearly so much mist so I could get much closer to the waterfall. Today, not a chance. The ONLY photo possibility was from much further back (and there was still quite a bit of mist from back there). So here you go folks: a Middle McCloud Falls photograph taken from far back. If you’d like to see (and purchase) an image of Middle McCloud with a superior comp, go to my website, and I will be happy to oblige: http://www.waterfallswest.com/gallery/page.php?id=north.

After I arrived back at my car and was getting ready to drive home, I noticed three vehicles pull up into the parking lot. What the hey? Didn’t anyone tell these people it is Black Friday, and no one is allowed to be out hiking here except me!?!? Ah well, enjoy folks. I am going home now anyway.

After work on Wednesday I drove up north to visit the in-laws for the weekend. I wanted to hike not only on Black Friday (as I do every year), but also on Thanksgiving Day. Just like Walmart, I am now expanding into the previous day to maximize my profits – in my case, it is waterfall viewing profits, not monetary profits. I did not have a lot of time on Thursday morning. I had to be in Redding by 10:30AM for Thanksgiving lunch/dinner. Who eats lunch at 10:30AM? Only my family of course.

Anyway, I chose to go to Montgomery Creek, just east of Redding, and was hoping to find at least one new waterfall out in that area. First problem I realized after I arrived at the in-laws on Wednesday evening, and it was a disaster. I left my GPS back home. Oh crikey. My GPS is my life-blood. It is absolutely essential for finding new waterfalls. With my GPS, I can get to a lot of places that are well off the beaten path, through forest and brush without any trails to lead me. But without it, I will likely have too much trouble just finding the trailhead, let alone avoid getting completely lost.

Oh what to do, what to do. Awhile back, I bought an iPhone topo map app. I only used it once to try it out, and I did not like it. My handheld GPS is just far superior to any iPhone app in every conceivable way. Well, I dusted it off (fortunately I had not deleted it), and downloaded some topo maps of the Montgomery Creek area before I left the house on Thursday morning. Hopefully with this app, I could find the trailhead, as well as get down to the waterfall.

I had another problem as well, and this was even worse than no GPS. I left my camera’s memory cards back at home as well. I only had a single 1GB card with me. This would not allow me to take very many photos. I would have to be very judicious about what photos I took over the course of the next two days.

My goal was to get down into Bear Canyon and find the waterfall on this creek dumping into Shasta Lake. I was able to find the spot where I thought I needed to start hiking, and made the descent into the canyon with my dumb little iPhone app. There was much brush and much poison oak, and once I got down into the canyon I got turned around and could not tell which way to go. Oh how I would have loved my handheld GPS! To make things worse, the terrain down there was very confusing anyway, and I was definitely afraid of getting lost. At one point the creek was on my right, and then all of a sudden it seemed to be on my left and going the opposite direction. I did manage to figure out what was going on with the terrain, but I realized it was just too brushy to get down to the waterfall. Even if I had my GPS, I could not have done it. This was not the right spot to go down. Strike out.

I got back to my car, and then went on to Potem Falls, just a short distance away. Unfortunately, by the time I arrived at Potem Falls, it was already in the sun. Potem gets the sun very early in the morning. I should have known this. I should have gone to Potem first, then try Bear Canyon afterwards. On the plus side, Potem Falls was really rocking, thanks to the recent rains. The flow was above average, and there was a lot of mist at the bottom of the falls. It was spectacular. I am not happy with the photo, due to the sun on the falls, but here it is for you anyway.

On the way back to Redding, I also found a better way down into Bear Canyon, which hopefully would allow me to get down to the waterfall there. Would I try it again the next day? Or go somewhere else? Stay tuned to find out.