Leon Turnbull Photography

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.