Leon Turnbull Photography

This waterfall shall remain nameless for fear of incriminating myself. ha ha, just kiddin. sort of.

Okay … so Saturday morning the forecast was saying it would be cloudy and overcast. A perfect day for waterfall hunting. And a perfect day for hunting out a brand new waterfall that I have had my scope on for awhile. I get up early, but not too early (because it would be overcast, right), and head out towards Nevada City. But what to my wandering eyes appear, but stars and clear skies! Yes folks, that is correct. The weather man is wrong again. Shocker. We have a big storm coming into the area next week, starting tomorrow. It is supposed to rain all week and a lot. Next weekend should be awesome for waterfallin’ if what I hear is true. But today (Saturday) it should have been cloudy. Alas, it was mostly sunny today. And if I didn’t get to my destination in time, the sun would be wreaking havoc with my newly discovered waterfall while I was trying to photograph it.

But the sun was really the least of my problems.

I approach the trailhead on a very rough road where four wheel drive is definitely a necessity. I have been on this road before so I knew what it was like. But my destination today is different. The trailhead is gated. I knew this would be the case. There were plenty of signs here, such as “dangerous”, “bridge out ahead”, etc. I suspected there would be such signs here.

So I turned around of course and went home.

This was out in the wilderness. Up ahead was an old abandoned mine, thus the reason for the signs. It was the winter. The creek ahead was flowing high, and possibly not crossable (certainly it won’t be crossable two days from now). There was no one around.

And there was a waterfall ahead. Or so I thought.

First though, the creek had to be crossed. It was flowing pretty hard. As I drove over the bridge on the main road up to the trailhead, I could see there was a lot of water in it. The hike follows a road high above the creek and I could hear it roaring. I highly doubted I would be able to cross it up ahead. As I approached the creek crossing, I came upon an old abandoned truck. According to the license plate, it had been there for 12 years, but it looked like it still might start (except that the hood was up, indicating not so). I meandered around the old “bridge” which was now “out”, found a very old tram that crossed the creek (I definitely would not be using that), and eventually found a spot that looked crossable. I waded across. The water only came up to my knees. No problem whatsoever. But if the creek was too much higher it probably would not have been cross-able.

I continued up to the old mine. More signs around now. I saw one very old rust beaten car falling down the hillside – amazing how the miners could drive these cars up these 4×4 roads without 4 wheel drive. Lots of old mining buildings around too, seemingly abandoned. One sign saying “active mining claims” but it was very old. One sign saying “no shooting – people area” (and “thank you” on the back of it); that one was a bit unnerving. I came back to the creek, and saw a couple small waterfalls. Only a couple small waterfalls.

I heard about this place from the late Russell Towle. I would never have known about it otherwise or suspected there might be waterfalls here. He had indicated in his notes there was “a very pretty triple waterfall twenty feet high, and just below it another waterfall perhaps twenty five feet high”. Hmmm … all I saw were two small waterfalls both about 15 feet high. This was one of them, a nice pretty double falls, but not what I was expecting. I did explore further up the canyon. But as I look back at Russell’s notes now, I realize that I may not have gone far enough after all. There could definitely be (and likely are) nicer and bigger waterfalls further up the canyon. Bummer! That means I just may have to go back here someday after all. Hmmm …