Leon Turnbull Photography

On Father’s Day, I drove up to Bowman Lake in the evening. The Tahoe Natl. Forest website said the road was still closed due to snow. But they are always behind and never keep their site up to date. I thought I would try it anyway. And I was right in trying it. The road was free of snow and open all the way up to Bowman Lake. There were quite a few other people out making the drive up there as well. But no one was going where I was planning to go. Because no one even knows about it.

The outlet from Bowman Lake is Canyon Creek. It flows down down down into the South Yuba River. And it makes a few waterfalls along the way. Not too many people know about these waterfalls below Bowman Lake. But this one here, which I am calling Upper Canyon Creek Falls, is not too hard to get to. If you stop at Windy Point on the road up to Bowman Lake, you can get a grand vista of this canyon, and see the creek rushing hard down from Bowman Lake, zigging and zagging, and winding its way down the canyon. If you look straight across from this point, you will see the creek disappear into the trees, then turn back away from you. This is where the waterfall is. If the trees were not there, you could likely see the falls. But you can’t get down there from Windy Point. There is a huge cliff in the way. You need to hike down from the other side, starting nearer to Bowman Lake.

The hike begins on a logging road. It was hot and muggy. The mosquitoes were out in force. I had to put on bug juice for the first time this year. I hate that stuff! But I got some from REI that was deet free, and it seemed to work very well once I put it on. The bugs were staying away from me. It is a pretty easy hike down the logging road until you get near the waterfall. I could hear and see the falls from the road, but how to get down to it? I found an open area from the road and started going cross country. As I got closer to the creek, I could get a pretty good look at the falls. It was a nice one. But once down at the creek, I was still far away from it. I had to work my way up the creek to the falls. Things got a bit more difficult and brushy, but I managed to do it. Now I was close to the falls, but there was a big cliff in the way, as the creek drops into a narrow gorge, and you can not see the waterfall. The only way to see it would be from the middle of the creek. The creek was rushing much too fast to consider wading or crossing. But fortunately, there were some big rocks that protruded right out into the middle of the creek. I could hop out on these rocks into the middle to see the waterfall, and take my photos. If the creek was flowing any harder, these rocks would have been submerged and this would not have been possible. As it was, things were a bit dicey. I was getting splashed by the water, and every once in a while, more of the creek would splash over onto the rocks, and all the while the creek was raging past me. The really bad thing though is that I was downstream from the dam at Bowman Lake, and if they decided to let out more water from the dam, I would have been in serious trouble. But I knew that the outflow from the dam is very consistent and this scenario was highly unlikely. Anyway, it is definitely a very cool spot. And the waterfall is a very cool one. I measured it to be 44 ft. high. I was extremely happy to have found this on Father’s Day. A great day indeed.