Leon Turnbull Photography

After work last week I headed up to Auburn to go to the Black Hole of Calcutta waterfall. This is an easy hike located on a well traveled trail (in more ways than one), starting from the very popular Confluence area and hiking down river, across the historic No Hands Bridge, and continuing on to the waterfall.

It is a pretty exciting 40 ft. high falls, though it is dry or trickling for much of the year, and so must be seen during the rainy season. The creek flow is substantially reduced now (due to the recent reduction in the rainfall here), but I find it much prettier when the flow is a bit lower like this, and easier to photograph, with no heavy mist at the base of the falls.

It was a weekday and late in the day. I saw a few people along the trail on the way to the waterfall. But once I arrived at the falls and started taking my pictures, I saw no one else along the trail for the rest of the day except for one lone female jogger who came along the trail with her small dog (much to the excitement of Kaya, who also was with me), and heading back towards the Confluence. I thought that would be the last I saw of her that day. Well …

After shooting the falls, I decided to continue hiking down river for a short distance, just for the heck of it. Actually, I wanted to get a full hour hike in this day for exercise. I am trying to lose weight and stuff, and hiking is certainly a great way to do that. I am down 12.5 pounds so far and am quite rather pleased about it (and halfway to my goal of 25 pounds). Anyway …

I continued on the trail with Kaya for a while and then turned back. I was walking along minding my own business, lost in my thoughts, and then I looked up and saw two big brown things on the trail ahead of me. Not lions or tigers or Sasquatch. But they were most certainly bears! They looked to be about medium sized, probably juveniles. When they saw me, they scampered off (as bears do best) into the bushes and up the hillside. I am not even sure if Kaya saw them or not, as she was far too occupied sniffing every little thing we passed along the trail (as she always does). The bears were right in my path of where I wanted to go, so I waited a few minutes before proceeding to allow them to clear out, then I continued on slowly. But they had not exactly cleared out. I saw them again, this time on a side trail up on the hillside, and one of them was standing on his hind legs looking down at me. Obviously, they were very curious. But when they saw that I saw them, they scooted off quickly into the bushes, making loud noises whilst scurrying away, and I never saw them again after that.

Once I arrived back at the waterfall, I saw the female jogger again with her dog, returning along the trail. I told her that I had just seen a couple bears about 3 minutes up the trail, and she told me she was heading up that steep side trail, exactly where I had seen the bears. She seemed a bit unsure of what to do, but continued on her way anyway. Hopefully, the bears were long gone by then and she never saw them.

It was definitely interesting and exciting to see bears out hiking. I was surprised because it is a popular trail, and so very close to the city and highway; and also, I would have thought they would still be hibernating at this time of year (but I guess they think it is spring already, or something!). I love seeing bears while out hiking, and it is pretty rare when I see them, though I have seen them quite a few times before while hiking in California. Interestingly, I have *never* seen a bear in any national park I have been to (which is usually the place where you would see them the most), but I have seen them in other places in the wilderness.

After work last week I headed out to Colfax and down Yankee Jim Rd. to the North Fork American River.

The creeks down there were all rushing. There were waterfalls falling down the side of the cliffs beside the road, on unnamed streams. Devil’s Falls was going crazy. I have only seen it like this once before, and that was many years ago. I didn’t have a lot of time before dark, so I headed up to Mexican Gulch. Most of the year, this little creek is dry or just a trickle. But today it was flowing stupendously. There is a nice little cascade, 34 ft. high, flowing down the drainage right beside the road, and I wanted to photograph it.

Getting up to the cascade was a little more difficult than I imagined however. I had to scramble up through the low hanging brush, crawling on my knees to get through it, then came to a spot where I had to scramble up and over a big rock and down to the creek in front of the cascade. Then I had to setup my camera in the middle of the stream, taking care not to slip on the wet rocks.

That is when I realized my favourite tripod head was broken! Ugh, it was like the attachment had just broken loose and it is now very wobbly, and not tight. When I got back home, I could see no way to tighten it back on, it just seems to have come un-attached. That sure bugs me, but fortunately I have another one I can use for now.

Well, I managed to get this nice photo of Mexican Gulch despite my tripod issues.

On Saturday I took off up north to Oroville’s Table Mountain area for a good ‘ole waterfall hike. I took my dog, Kaya, as well. She loves a good ‘ole waterfall hike.

I had envisioned a beautiful sunrise shot from the overlook at Phantom Falls. I had mentioned this cryptically a couple weeks ago, but I hurt my back that weekend, so my plan to go here fell through. My back is better now, so I thought to try again. This time, though, the weather did not co-operate. I arrived in Oroville to overcast skies. It was dark, though, so I couldn’t really tell if I might get a decent sunrise or not from Phantom Falls. It is a 1.5 mile hike to the waterfall, so I needed to start hiking in the dark to get there in time for sunrise. So off I went …

And immediately got bogged down in a big swamp. There is no trail on Table Mountain, you just need to work your way cross country in the general direction you want to go. With all the rain recently, there is a lot of standing water on the mountain top, and since it was still dark and I couldn’t really see much, I walked right through it. Uck! Now my boots are soaked and I just started the hike. I found my way through the swamp, and fortunately, found dry land for the rest of the hike.

Table Mountain is a wonderful place to visit if you like wildflowers. There is an amazing display here in the spring, and this year, it is going to be spectacular because of the good winter rains we have had. Already, the flowers are starting to pop up. They are all over the mountain, and since there is no official trail, it is rather difficult to hike here without stepping on the flowers. It is hard enough to avoid them in the daylight, but in the dark it is extra difficult. Well, it did start getting light out fairly quickly, so I was able to see where I was going … eventually …

And that’s when I came upon the crazy cows. The cows are also all over the mountain, and most likely, in your direct path to where you want to go. I don’t know why, but they make me rather nervous. I put Kaya on the leash so she wouldn’t go chasing after them (or vice-versa). I made a direction to head around the cows, giving them as much space as possible, and not get too close to them. They watched me closely. When I got by them, they started trotting after me! I think they were preparing to attack. Now I was the one watching them closely. But I guess they figured human meat (or dog meat, I’m not sure which) wasn’t so tasty after all, so they stopped following me, and went back to eating their grass.

I arrived at the Phantom Falls overlook shortly after sunrise. There was no pretty sunrise, just overcastness. That was okay, because it meant that I would be able to see plenty of other waterfalls here as well. There are a lot of waterfalls on Table Mountain, and I managed to see five of them on this day, but there are others as well, and I will definitely need to come back here someday soon and get out to them.

Phantom Falls was flowing quite nicely, though I thought there might be more water flowing in the creek than there was. The overlook at Phantom Falls is definitely a spectacular one. It is also an incredibly steep drop-off. Now Kaya was making me nervous, wandering around close to the cliff. She is a very sure-footed dog, but she did once almost go over the brink of a waterfall when I wasn’t watching her. I told her to lie down near my bag while I took my photos, which she did very patiently. She is such a good dog.

Once done with Phantom Falls, I made my way around to some of the other waterfalls in the area, and I will post some of those pictures later. Afterwards, we made our way into Oroville for lunch, and I bought Kaya a hamburger to reward her for the good hike she did. She deserved it. And of course, she really enjoyed eating a bit of “cow”. 🙂

I am still working on processing this week’s photos, so here’s another one from last week. This is Middle Kenebec Creek Falls, 34 ft. high.

This is the easiest of the three waterfalls on Kenebec Creek to reach, but is difficult to photograph. A high perspective is needed in order to view the upper portion of the falls, but that is not easy to achieve. The rocks are pretty slippery here, and I was challenged to get in this spot to take the shot.

I sure was surprised to find this waterfall, though. When I came here last year, the creek was at a medium flow. There is a sign at the bridge over the creek saying “falls” just upstream. Well, I went upstream at that time, and I only found what seemed to me to be a small 5 or 10 ft. high waterfall. This is the “falls”, I thought? It was definitely “not worthy”. Yawn. No pictures taken. Well, this time around, the creek was at a high flow. And lo and behold, there was actually a waterfall here this time! With the much higher flow, the creek takes on a new dimension, and the 5 or 10 ft. waterfall becomes an exciting 34 ft. high cascade. It is most certainly a waterfall worth visiting, but obviously, only worth visiting when the creek flow is very high.

Here’s another from my outing to Kenebec Creek in Nevada City. This is Upper Kenebec Creek Falls.

If very few people know about the lower falls on Kenebec Creek (or the middle falls on Kenebec Creek), then far fewer will know about this upper falls on Kenebec Creek, and it is the biggest of the three of them (though I think the lower falls is the prettiest). This one is definitely off the beaten path, and not on the main trail down to the river. It also requires a bit of a scramble to get down to it. It is not particularly difficult but with my bad back it was not good for me to go down there. In fact, I think I was trying to protect my back so much on this hike, that I may have put undue pressure on my ribs, and stretched or pulled my rib cartilage a bit. That’s sure what it felt like a couple days later when I had plenty of troubles breathing and even sitting down. Man, is my body ever messed up right now!

Anyway …I scrambled down to the bottom of this waterfall just as the rain stopped (perfect timing, again), and set up shop in the middle of the creek to take the photo (I did not need to get wet, though). The creek was flowing beautifully well, and the waterfall is a very nice fan-type falls, and difficult to photograph even with a wide angle lens. I measured it to be 93 ft. high. The lower section shown here is 57 ft., there is also an upper section which you can’t see from this photo. It is definitely one of those “in your face” type photos, which is exactly what it felt like down there at the bottom of the cascade. A beautiful place indeed.