Leon Turnbull Photography

On Saturday, I managed to drag my friend Brian out hiking with me. On Black Friday, he said he’d rather go out and stand in line at Kmart with the hordes of other people out shopping that day. Silly boy. But on Saturday, he was game for waterfall hunting. I gave him a choice as to where to go, and he picked Squaw Creek.

The thing about waterfall hunting is that you never know what you are going to get (kinda like a box of chocolates). A co-worker had told me there was a waterfall out on this creek on the road past Potem Falls. He told me precisely where it was. I found it on Google Earth. On Google Earth, I could easily see that there were three waterfalls at this location. But what he didn’t tell me and what I couldn’t tell from Google Earth is how big they were.

It is a long drive from Redding to Potem Falls, and Squaw Creek was about 12 miles past Potem Falls on a rough dirt road. It was very early in the morning, and you would think we wouldn’t see anyone or anything out on this podunk road in the middle of nowhere. Wrong. We passed a couple trucks driving very slowly. It looked like they were hunters searching the woods for deer or other game. I imagine that we scared their precious animals away when we drove past them. Good. On the way back, we passed a few more trucks. We saw one guy drinking a beer at 9 in the morning as he got into his car to drive away. We also saw a few houses out here in boogieland. Who the heck would live way out here? Why would anyone want to live way out here? We decided not to get out of our car and go up to ask anyone why they lived out here. Brian imagined some old dude sitting on his porch with a beer in one hand and a shotgun on his lap waiting for us as we drove past.

Well, about the waterfall, we did find it after all that long drive. It was a whopping five feet high. The three falls I saw on Google Earth were all very small, the largest of them was 8 feet high. I’ll never trust Google Earth again. And the next time someone tells me about a “nice” waterfall, I’ll ask them how high it is.

We had to scramble down a steep bank from the road to get down to the creek. There was a trail here, so obviously many other people had been here before (including my co-worker). I’m at a loss as to why anyone would drive way out here in the boonies for a 5 foot waterfall. Once down at the bottom, we had to wade across the creek in order to get to a spot to photograph the falls. My dog Kaya does not have anything to do with that kind of nonsense. She will not go in any water that is up past her belly. I took her back to the car while Brian stayed down at the creek to chase away any cougars that might be in the area. We took our photos of the small waterfalls, then left. On the way back, we stopped at Potem Falls. Now that is a really nice (and big) waterfall. We did not take photos of Potem Falls though, as the sun was too harsh by the time we got there. It was, however, flowing very nicely for this time of year.