More Please
Winter is still trying to hang on. The end of last week saw a lovely April storm come our way and I headed up into the foothills after work on Friday evening. I liked this quote from a weather site I follow: “Ironically the Winter that never was may want to hang on here in Spring. Everyone loves a good comeback story.” (tahoeweatherdiscussion.com). It seems also that we might get more wet weather next week as another storm is in the long range scopes. Gotta like it.
My plan was to go out hiking Friday night as well as Sunday afternoon but I only got out on Friday. I’m always too tired on Sundays to do anything, I should know better than try to plan something for that day.
Anyway, even though I left work early, traffic was a mess. I drove through a crazy downpour before I got to Auburn and my map was telling me it would be getting to Colfax in less than an hour. I figured I might just have time to get to the first waterfall I had planned to see before it hit. It did not work out as planned however.
In fact it was already raining pretty good when I started the hike at Windy Point. I was looking to find a new waterfall there, but the directions given to me were rather lame, to put it mildly. I was thinking this would be a short easy hike but I soon realized it was going to be quite the opposite. By the time I reached Chamberlain Creek I figured out the directions and where the waterfall must be located. I would have to scramble up the creek to get to it. There was a path but it was very difficult, very overgrown, and there was a ton of poison oak. I persevered though and eventually came upon the waterfall. The creek was high and strong and the waterfall was magnificent, a 50 foot high fast rushing cascade, but it was determined not to give up its secrets to me. The path came out at the side of the cascade but offered no viewpoint. I could not dare get down close (or into) the creek as it was rushing much too fast. I tried going up to the top of the falls but that did not work either. One last try was to go further downstream. I was able to get down to creek level that way and get a shot. As you can see there are a lot of branches in the way and the view is rather obscured but this was the only option I had. If the creek was flowing less, I think I would have been able to get in the creek and a lot closer to the falls. I may definitely come back here in a few weeks to try again. This is obviously not a great shot but at least the rain had stopped, I never did see that huge storm cell that I drove through on the freeway.
There was a surprising and disturbingly large amount of trash near the falls. It was all very old, none recent, but why was it there? This is a remote and very difficult to reach location. It is not a camping spot so this was not left by any regular group of campers. Kids? Perhaps but I’m not sure why kids would come way out here to this remote spot. Miners? Pot growers? The latter one seems to be more of a possibility. Whoever it was, it sure makes me mad to see all this trash way out here in the wilderness. This should be a completely pristine area. I would love to come back and clean it up but it would be extremely difficult to haul it out of there.
I took an easier route back to my car, nonetheless I was very tired climbing out of the canyon. This is not the first tough hike I’ve done this year but man I must be out of shape again cuz I was really struggling. There were quite a few other waterfalls dropping down the hillside on the other side of the river on unnamed streams. I did stop to get a shot of Slaughter Ravine Falls but that was the only one. I booted it back home in time to get dinner and watch my Canucks lose again. Argh.