Leon Turnbull Photography

Today was my wife Tara and my 11th wedding anniversary. Of course I had a great idea on how we should celebrate: go waterfallin’! Actually, Tara was quite game for this idea, believe it or not. Tara’s brother and his wife came over to look after our kids for the day, and so off we went into the mountains to do some hiking and waterfall hunting.

I was hoping to find up to three possible new waterfalls as well as go to Bassi Falls. It didn’t quite work out this way, but we did have a lot of fun.

The thing about me is … I like to study topo maps and find potential places where there might be waterfalls. Sometimes I go out and find a nice little surprise. Other times, I find nothing. But it is all fun to me anyway. So anyway, I found three possible locations for new falls in the vicinity of Bassi Falls along Ice House Rd. that I wanted to try out.

It was sunny in Folsom when we started out, but as we drove up Ice House Rd. conditions changed. It had snowed the night before up there, very surprisingly, and there was quite a lot of it still along the road. Hmmm. We started driving up a dirt road that was covered in new snow. It was fun, but eventually we came to a big snow drift and were forced to get out and walk the rest of the way. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to where I was hoping. We came to a creek crossing and the creek was flowing very deep. We probably could have crossed it had we been prepared, but it was very cold and very deep; actually, it probably would have been a bit crazy to cross it. I was a bit bummed, because I really was hoping to get to this one particular spot. Well, strike one. The next stop was to go back upstream on this same creek (without crossing it). This we did, and in fact, we did find a waterfall. Here it is. Actually, it is not much of a waterfall, only about 15 ft. high. But with the creek flowing so well, it is an exciting little thing. This is Jones Fork Silver Creek Falls. As I was taking the photos, the clouds rolled in and it started snowing again. It was a bit of a blizzard with snow blowing around and quite cold as well. Did anyone say it was May yet?

Anyway, off we went to destination number three. That ended up being another strike. We were able to get to the creek where I thought a waterfall might be, but alas, no waterfall. So the results from the day were 1 out of 3 (maybe more like 1/2 out of 3, since the one was only 15 ft. high). Still though, it was a very fun day. We didn’t end up going to Bassi Falls since we were out of time; instead, we went back to Folsom and had a nice dinner out before heading back home.