Leon Turnbull Photography

Rattle and Hum … to put it lightly, that is the extent of what my brain was doing the entire drive up to Faucherie Lake the other evening. Not to mention my poor vehicle. The road up to Bowman Lake and Faucherie Lake has got to be the roughest, craziest, wickedest, bumpiest road in the greater Sacramento area bar none. It takes a full hour or more to drive the 12 miles on the dirt road. That is 12 miles per hour. And the last 7 miles or so from the west end of Bowman Lake up to Faucherie Lake is the worst. I was doing less than 5 miles per hour much of the time. The thing that totally boggled my mind, however, is that I saw two low clearance cars driving this road. You would have to be absolutely nuts of the highest order to drive this road in your car. I was going bonkers in my high clearance SUV.

Anyway … needless to say, I don’t like driving up to Bowman Lake or Faucherie Lake very often. This was actually my second trip up there this year (which is one more than any sane person would do in a year). The first time I just drove to Bowman Lake. This time I drove all the way to Faucherie Lake. And as I said, the last part is much rougher.

I was looking for new waterfalls of course. I have been to the waterfall below Faucherie Lake before. But there are some more falls above Faucherie Lake, along Canyon Creek coming down from French Lake. I checked dreamflows.com and it indicated the flow on Canyon Creek below French Lake was a paltry 6 cubic feet per second (cfs). That did not bode well for me. In fact, it seems that it is extremely rare that they let out more water from the dam at French Lake. Yet, I had heard that the waterfalls above Faucherie Lake were quite good ones in the summer. So I wanted to go check out this 6 cfs flow and see what these falls were really like.

I arrived at the trailhead later than I anticipated (because the drive took a lot longer than anticipated). I had hoped to hike all the way up to French Lake, but I didn’t think I would have time now. Anyway, the first order of business is to cross the dam at Faucherie Lake. Stupidly, I forgot my water shoes at home. Thus, I had to wade across in my bare feet. As I was crossing, I noticed a lot of little fish in the stream below the dam. Then I noticed a snake in the water ahead of me! It was not a rattle snake. It was just swimming in the water, probably trying to catch the little fishies. Well I don’t like snakes, rattlers or not, and this one was in my direct path. So I went wide around it on the rocks. That is when I noticed a second snake, also not a rattler. Now I was pretty wary, cuz there certainly could be rattlers around here. When I got to the other side of the creek, I noticed that I had slashed my foot open on the sharp rocks. Serves me right for forgetting my water shoes. But I blame it all on the snakes. It was a pretty deep cut, but it was not bleeding too badly and it did not hurt. So I put my socks and hiking boots back on and continued on the hike (the foot did not start hurting me until after I got back home, and then I was in quite some pain).

As I approached the inlet to Faucherie Lake on Canyon Creek, I could hear the creek rushing quite strongly. It sure seemed a lot more than 6 cfs. How could this be, I wondered? I did not know, but I was definitely pleased about it. There is a trail leading up the west side of Canyon Creek, and it was fairly easy to follow, though a bit faint in places. I reached the waterfalls in short order. I found a series of four separate drops all in a row. None of them are individually very high or spectacular (the highest is 20 ft.), but taken together, it is definitely a beautiful location and an excellent series of waterfalls. It was a bit cliffy (as per usual with my hikes), and difficult to get down to the creek side to get a closer look and photograph, but I carefully made my way down to one section where I could get a nicer view.

I then continued up the trail to Weir Lake to its outlet. I suspect that a lot of the flow in Canyon Creek was coming from Weir Lake where there is no dam, but I did not go far enough to see what the flow into Weir Lake was like. I was out of time and could not continue up to French Lake, so back down the trail I went. I stopped at the waterfall below Faucherie Lake as well, and got there just as the sun was setting and the mosquitoes were coming out. But I didn’t see any of the little buggers until I got there, so I did have quite a pleasant evening.