Leon Turnbull Photography

Last week after work I went to visit Stevens Creek Falls in Colfax. Technically, the creek is actually not named Stevens Creek and the trail is called Stevens Trail, not Stevens Creek Trail. The creek is really called Robbers Ravine. But everyone calls this Stevens Creek Falls. Go figure. Anyway, the creek is flowing fairly well right now, and it is a good time to visit the waterfall. That is, if you love poison oak and ticks!

It is a very easy trail to the waterfall, but poison oak abounds along the trail. It can be avoided if you are keeping your eyes open. However, once you get to the waterfall, if you want to get a decent view, you need to scramble off trail, and that means pushing through a swath of poison oak. I was trying like crazy to avoid the stuff, but it was pretty much impossible. Nonetheless, I only ended up with one very small bit of itch on my stomach afterwards, so I guess I did pretty well. But not so well on the ticks. I picked up four of them while scrambling up to the falls, and one of them bit me pretty good. Dang! Ticks are far worse than poison oak and some of them carry awful stuff along with them. But I think I got it out before it did too much damage and I just ended up with a big red spot that itched for a couple days. That is the first tick bite I have had in quite a few years, and I was not happy about it.

Anyway, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. I actually arrived at the falls too early. The sun was still shining brightly on the waterfall. It is in an open area and facing south, so in direct line of the evening sun. Rather than just sit and wait for an hour, I decided to continue hiking on down the trail. I had never been past the falls before, but I knew the trail went all the way down to the river. I expected it to start descending rather quickly after the falls. But no. It stayed very high, following a contour along the river, high above it. The views were astounding, and wildflowers abundant along the trail (along with poison oak of course). Hundreds of feet below me, I saw some kayakers and rafters going down the river, and I watched them (and heard them) as they went over a rapid. The river was loud, even so far below. I continued hiking for about 30 minutes, still with no sign that the trail was going to descend down to the river, then I decided to turn around and go back to the falls.

There was still sun shining on the falls when I got back to it, so I first decided to work on the lower falls. The lower section is a bugger to get down to, however. Very steep and dangerous drop-offs. I have been down there before, and wasn’t in the mood this day. So I decided to get a picture from the top of the lower falls looking down instead. That is when I almost lost my expensive polarizer filter over the falls. I dropped it, and it started rolling down to the creek and over the falls. If it had done that, it would have been gone. But I kicked out my foot to block it just in time, and it ended up in the creek but did not go over the falls. Whew, that was a close one!

After shooting the lower section, I worked my way up through the oak and ticks to the upper section of the falls. It is a very difficult waterfall to shoot, and it is not very photogenic. The waterfall is 337 ft. high, but you cannot see much of it from any point, plus there are many obstructions of bushes and trees as well. This section here is the middle section of the falls, and to get this angle, I had to scramble up on top of a big rock. After doing so, I wondered how I would possibly get down (but I guess it wasn’t too difficult actually), and I had to spend about 5 minutes on top of the rock trying to get my tripod positioned in a secure enough spot. By the time I was ready, the sun was just starting to leave but was still casting a warm glow on the top section of the falls.