Leon Turnbull Photography

It’s snowing big-time in the Sierra Nevada right now (and very much needed too), but this one is from my Canada trip over Christmas … I was a bit bummed on this day because my planned hike to a different waterfall did not pan out. I was also very anxious to photograph “something”, and I knew that my wife wanted to take the kids ice skating at around noon, so I didn’t have an overly large amount of time. I thought to try Beaver Falls in Trail again.

Last time I was here in the winter, I found it far too dangerous to try to get down to the base of the falls. The surrounding cliffs at the waterfall are very steep, and in the winter it is treacherous to try a descent. This time I was determined that if I was going to go back here, I would attempt a descent to the bottom if at all possible. Why would I even bother, when I knew it would surely be impossible? Well, I knew that there was a rope from the top (not here last time I was here in the winter), and I was “hoping” that I could use it to descend the icy slope to the bottom.

As it turned out, I did not use the rope. It was there and I wondered about using it. However, there is a steep dropoff from the top of the cliff down to where the rope begins. It would be dicey at best to get down that first steep part and grab hold of the rope. If I missed a step, I’d be sliding all the way to the bottom (and very fast like).

I decided to follow the animals down to the bottom instead.

The route to Beaver Falls follows about a mile along the railroad tracks to the top of the falls. I saw many animal tracks along here. They looked like dog tracks, but they were not. There were no human tracks along with them, and although there were houses around the area, I did not think that dogs would just wander down here all by themselves and along the tracks for such a distance, plus there were quite a lot of sets of tracks as well, going in and out of the forest. Perhaps coyotes? foxes? bobcats? I followed the tracks all the way to the waterfall. Then I saw something rather unexpected. The tracks continued down the cliff to the bottom of the waterfall and then across the (partially frozen) creek before disappearing on the other side.

I decided to follow them down to the bottom (instead of trying the rope). The last time I was here in the winter, there was a lot more snow. I had to use snowshoes to walk along the railroad tracks, and the descent to the bottom was just too dicey. This time around, I did not need snowshoes as there was just a few inches of snow on the ground. But since it was so cold, I thought the cliff descent would be just a sheet of ice and again, too dangerous. It was a bit icy going down, but there were branches I could hang onto the whole way, so it wasn’t dangerous. Only the last section down to the creek did not have any branches to hang onto, so I just had to slide on my bum down that last part to the creek (getting back up that section was a bit tricky).

I was overly pleased to be able to get down to the bottom of Beaver Falls in the winter. It was so very cool down there. The waterfall was flowing pretty good, and partially frozen. The only thing I was upset about was the dirty ice around the waterfall (from muddy water flow), which is something I did not see here last time I was here in the winter (it is hard to see from the photo). Still though, it was very beautiful.

I worked my way up the creek closer to the falls, and as close to the creek as possible. I was not sure how close I could get to the creek before falling through. I used my tripod to test the ice underfoot, then took one step closer to the creek until the tripod poked through to the fast moving water underneath. Okay, I cannot go any further than that! I do wish though, that I could have moved over a bit more for this photograph. Perhaps if I was as light as the animals, I could have moved closer. Time to lose some weight, eh?