Leon Turnbull Photography

It was only about 33° at night and not very cold at all. I woke up in the morning after having a pretty decent sleep. I packed up, had my breakfast (without coffee), then I started the big hike back up the hill. I was still incredibly tired. I really had quite overdone it the previous day. Would I have enough energy to get home? Without coffee?

The photo is from Kings Creek Cascades. As you can see, it was mostly frozen also. If you look closely, you can see animal tracks going down to the creek where the water is flowing. It is one of the very few places one could get down to get some water. I have no idea what kind of animal, but I saw a few tracks similar to this along the creek. Perhaps deer, but I did not see a distinctive hoof print in the deep snow.

It is a big ascent from Kings Creek Falls back to the road and I had just enough water to make it. I filled up with water, going down the same steep and sketchy section to the creek. Now I would have enough for the rest of the hike. After this first ascent, most of the hike back to Mill Creek Falls was downhill. From Mill Creek Falls, however, it’s another two and a half miles with a lot of up and down hiking. When you are very tired, it’s a very hard hike. You feel every little up. In painful agony. It took quite a bit of time. But at least now, the trail was very well trodden. A lot of people had been here in just one day.

I saw a quite a few hikers on the trail. None of them seemed too friendly and did not say much to me, even when I tried to say anything to them. Is it because of COVID? Well, at least all the tracks in the snow made the hiking a bit easier. I finally arrived back at the parking lot at 3PM. The parking lot was completely full. I couldn’t believe how many people had come up for the day to Lassen. Every one was hanging out (too) close together in the parking lot, and not wearing masks. Compare that to the people I passed on the trail. They were wearing masks and freaking out when I passed them (so it seemed). Shouldn’t it be opposite? It was an interesting and difficult backpacking trip in magnificent Lassen Volcanic National Park.

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Kings Creek Falls in the winter? Impossible, you say. You would have to walk 20 miles one way in the snow. But if anyone can do it, the madman can do it. Right?

Going to Kings Creek Falls in the winter has been in my dreams for a few years now. But how to do it? Well, I found a route that would be about 7 miles one way. That is not doable as a day hike but it would work for a backpacking trip. But it is so cold in the winter! Normal temperatures at night are in the low 20’s or below. Enter this last week: unusually high temperatures for January. MLK long weekend in January. It would only be 33° at night. This might actually be a very good time to do this trip. Unfortunately, my dream did not happen as I envisioned it, but yes, I did make it there. (and back)

It was hard!

My route took me past Mill Creek Falls again. This time, there was only one other set of tracks on the trail. (unlike at Christmas, when the trail was very well trodden). Mill Creek Falls was flowing well, even better than before. This was due to the snow melting from all the warm weather we have had. Kings Creek Falls should be fantastic … so I thought.

I was following the other snow-shoer past Mill Creek, all the way to Cold Boiling Lake. I was surprised he went that far. Or she. It seemed like he (she) camped at Cold Boiling Lake and after that, I was all on my own. The snow was heavy. Slushy. Deep. Very hard going. It took a lot of effort. I was beaten down tired well before I reached my destination. Yet, I continued on. I was past the point of no return, so I must continue on all the way. Or die.

There is literally no water from the trailhead until you get to Kings Creek. Obviously you cannot drink from Mill Creek, which has a lot of sulfur in it. That would taste super great. Not! I hoped to fill up at Kings Creek. However, when I got there I discovered a huge and unexpected problem. There was no way to get down to the creek! The snowbanks on each side of the creek were 5 feet high at least. It was impossible to get down to it. If I went down, I would not be getting back up until spring. At least I’d have water to drink until the snow all melted. Ha. Well, what could I do? I searched around and I finally found one spot that was doable. It was steep and sketchy but I made it down and got some water. More importantly, I got back up.

At the road, Kings Creek had pretty good flow. I was feeling very optimistic. From here, it is a 1 mile hike down to the falls and about a 600 foot descent. There should be even more water in the creek down at the falls. Humph. There was a lot more snow in Kings Creek Canyon. It was very deep and very tough going.

Worst of all, there was no water flowing down at the falls. The creek was all snowed over and iced over. Where did all that water go from up on the road? Kings Creek Falls itself was completely frozen. How disappointing. I was really expecting it to have a good decent flow considering how well Mill Creek Falls was. Yes, I know it is higher elevation but with the warm weather there should have been a lot of snow melting into the creek. The more I think about it, the more I think it should have been a lot better.

Oh well, what can you do? It was still very interesting to see and I did take photos of it. I was so tired. I still had to set up camp. In the snow. And there was no water. I could not get any water from the creek anywhere, so I had to melt snow for my drinking water. This took a long time and used up all my gas. That meant that I would not be able to have coffee in the morning. Well, what is more important, drinking water or coffee? Drinking water, I guess. Sigh.

I watched a movie, and went to bed …

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I’ve always wanted to snow shoe to Mill Creek Falls in Lassen Volcanic National Park in the winter. Well, this past weekend was my chance to do it.

My wife joined me on the hike. She just got brand new snow shoes (an early Christmas gift). I was totally jealous. Mine still work fine, but they are really beat up. I want new ones like she now has. Maybe I will steal them from her. Hummmmm ….

We arrived at the park before sunrise. I talked to some lady while my wife was using the restroom. They were camping in a tent at the park. It was 24 degrees. Yikes, that is a bit cold to tent camp for my bones. She said it was not cold. Ok, if you say so, ma’am. There was two feet of snow on the ground, but it was hard packed. You almost did not need snow shoes. Almost, but not quite. We would have been sinking in a lot without them. The latest storm dumped a lot of rain, but there was not much fresh snow, only a few inches. I wished there was more fresh snow. We need it. This winter is definitely not starting out like last year. Sadly. Although… actually we’ve had more rain this November than last year (but much less overall because October last year was huge).

It is a gorgeous hike. We saw quite a few animal tracks in the snow, including fresh bear tracks. I always like seeing those, but we did not see any bear or other animal. We arrived at the overlook to the waterfall. It was incredibly pretty in the snow, and flowing well. In the summer, I have no (or few) qualms about descending partially down the cliff to get a better view of the falls. I dared not do any such thing this time. It would have been extremely dangerous. Sliding off the cliff. That would not be much fun. The hike was very fun.

But it was tough. It is not an easy hike to Mill Creek Falls. There is a lot of up and down hiking and with snow shoes, it is twice as difficult. My wife struggled on the hike, especially on the way back from the falls, but she made it. Even I was tired by the end of the hike. This was not an easy way to break in your brand new snow shoes. Whew.

We were almost back to the trailhead when we saw a couple descending the trail. They were drunk, they each had a beer in their hand, they were wearing running shoes, and they were falling all over the place in the snow. They said they were going to the falls. Yeah, right. Good luck with that. I can easily imagine them getting stuck in the snow and not able to get up, and no one there to help them out until spring. Or else falling down the cliff at one of the very sketchy spots, at which you need to be extremely careful (ie. Not drunk). Frankly, I was just hoping they were not planning to leave their empty beer cans out on the trail. I try not to be stereotypical, but these are exactly the kind of people that do this kind of thing, and it ticks me off all the time when I see litter in the wilderness. Ok, well, enough of that. I hope you all had a great weekend.

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We were off to Grandmother’s house for the longish weekend, but first off we would stop for a hike in the woods at Lassen NP and this time my daughter Nekoda wanted to come with me. The traffic was horrible on this weekend and it took much longer than expected to drive up north. In addition, I came across an unusually large number of incredibly rude drivers. If you are going to drive slow why are you staying in the passing lane? And then you get upset with me or block me if I want to pass you? What the h-e-double-hockey-sticks is wrong with you? Last time I checked you do not own the road. (Of course when I say “you” I am sure I am not referring to you the reader of this blog).

Anyway, sorry about that little rant. It was already after 7PM when we started the hike at the Lassen trailhead. That would give us precious little time to get up to the waterfall and back before dark.

The temperature was very cool. Considering it was over 100° in the valley, I expected it to be a lot warmer at Lassen. I knew it would be cooler than 100 degrees of course, but I thought it would still be quite warm in the mountains and the mosquitoes would be out, however it was cool enough that I had to wear a jacket, and the mosquitoes? None to be seen.

I wore my knee brace for the first time in a long time, to give support to my painful knee. It worked all right. There were a couple times I turned it the wrong way, and experienced searing pain for the mistake, but mostly it was good. This was a fairly easy hike but it felt good, and now I was not too worried about the big hike coming up. One thing I was worried about was the snow. There was still a lot of snow starting at 6800 feet elevation and increasing much more as we climbed up. By about 7200 feet, the trail was 100% under the snow cover and pretty much impossible to follow. There were a couple times it took a while to figure out what direction to go, and I wondered if we would even make it up to the falls. My next hike would be at a higher elevation than this.

The snow was hard packed and it was easy and fun to work on. You just have to be careful not to step in any big holes. There were a few of those. You could break a leg if you stepped in one. We were careful, though, and we had a lot of fun. Nekoda really enjoyed this snow walking. I told her that this is basically what I’ve been doing all spring so far.

In addition to the snow, there also were the creek crossings. The first one was a doozy. The creek was rushing very fast. We were able to jump across it on the rocks, but we still did get wet feet in the process. Nekoda has much shorter legs than I do, obviously, and I was concerned. It was a pretty big jump. She did it perfectly. This is the stream coming from Forest Lake, the same stream that the waterfall would be on – sort of. Sort of not though, exactly. Anyway, it made me think that the waterfall should be fantastic.

But it was not to be fantastic. The falls were flowing all right but not nearly as much as I thought they would be. In fact, I do not think this one ever really has great flow. Anyway, it was nice enough. I had to wade across the main stream to get up close to it, and it was quite deep and mushy. Nekoda waited for me on the dry side while I went to take photographs.

After taking the pictures, we had very little time to get down the mountain before dark. We hurried down as quickly as possible over the snow, over the river, through the woods,  and just made it back to the car when it was getting dark. Then it was off to Grandmother’s house we go. It was a lovely evening at Lassen NP.

 

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I got up super early for this one: one last hike on the Memorial Day long weekend. Way too early indeed. 3AM early.

The trouble with this hike is, and it’s why I have not done it before, is that the sun gets on the waterfalls very early and it is a very long hike to get to them, which makes it almost impossible to get to them in good light. However, I found a better way. I just was not sure if I could do it this early in the season, but good news: there was no snow on the road and I could drive all the way to the new trailhead. This might actually work after all.

Indeed, it turned out to be a very easy hike to the waterfall. Only 1.5 miles instead of 5.5 miles. That’s a darn good shaving. Very little elevation gain, and only a little bit of cross country hiking was involved, nothing too difficult. I got to the falls in good time and it was flowing great. It is 41 feet high and it is a beauty.

In case you are wondering, I purposely made a longer exposure of this waterfall than usual. Some people do not like the silky waterfall look with longer exposures, and that is perfectly fine, and I agree that in some cases it is better to use a shorter exposure. Mostly, though, only with powerful waterfalls, not with smaller waterfalls. I am adamant about this. A short exposure with smaller waterfalls like this one will make the falls look choppy and uninteresting. Be a better photographer. A longer exposure will give the image a very artistic feel, and that is what I was trying for with this shot. I think I succeeded.

I decided not to go down to the bottom of the falls, as the view from up above is stellar anyway, but also I wanted to try to get to the upper Falls in good light. I figured I could go to the bottom afterwards if it was still in shade when I got back down to it. However, finding the upper Falls was troublesome to say the least. It is not in the place where it is supposed to be, in fact there is no waterfall at all where it is marked on all the maps. Did it even exist? No wonder I’ve never seen any photos of it. I had to do some serious off-trail exploring through the snow, but eventually I found the upper falls and it’s a nice one as well. Photo is coming later.

By the time I found it, I figured the lower Falls would be in the sun so I decided to go back a different route thinking it would be much much easier. Big mistake. It was not only harder, but I got lost. Not really, but I definitely would’ve been seriously lost and likely still out there if I did not have a GPS.

The first trouble was that snow, which covered most of the trail. The second trouble was that the actual trail did not precisely follow the USGS topo maps. Despite the snow cover, I was able to follow the trail fairly closely and even if I missed part of it I always found it again quickly. Until …. I came to a big Meadow and swamp, where I lost the trail completely and there was no finding it again. The trail supposedly went right through the middle of the swamp, but who knows if it really did or not. Not wanting to go back, I just hiked along the Meadow to the end. It was not so easy to do but I made it to the end of the meadow, where I found the trail again. And just in time. The trail proper took off in a different direction down a gully on the other side of the ridge. Well all right, it will be a cakewalk from here, right? Nope. At the bottom of this little gully there was another swampy area. And I lost the trail again! This time was much worse. I got completely turned around from where I was supposed to be heading. However, all I had to do was just follow my trusty GPS and it led me in the right direction and back onto the trail proper. No problem. The rest of the hike was indeed a cakewalk.

I have been thinking a lot lately about that guy and his dog who got lost hiking in the Sierra Nevada. In addition, there was some other person who got lost out east on the Appalachian trail and died, within a mile of the trail. But I don’t really get it. There is no excuse for getting lost in the wilderness if you are properly prepared. These people did not have a GPS. Why would you not have a GPS? Or at least a Compass and know how to use it? If you do not have a GPS, you can download maps onto your phone (even if there is no cell coverage), and you can buy solar powered chargers for your cell phone, right? So there is no reason at all for getting lost. I always take my GPS, with extra charged batteries, plus I have downloaded Maps onto my phone for emergency backup situations, and a SPOT device for real emergencies. So there you have it. Be prepared, don’t die. That’s a good philosophy. Am I right?

http://waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=lower-canyon-creek-falls-926

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