Leon Turnbull Photography

Surprises are nice.

After shooting Kings Creek Falls, I hiked back up to my vehicle. Of course, by the time I got back to it, the sun was fully out. I wanted to do one more hike before I met up for lunch with my family down at Lake Helen. My choice was the West Fork Hat Creek to Paradise Meadows, a hike that I had not ever done before, but I knew that there were a couple small waterfalls along this creek. I had no bones about what to expect, namely that the falls would be in complete sun and high contrast by the time I arrived, but that was fine with me.

There was construction going on the road beside the trailhead, so I had to park up the road a bit. After getting away from the noise, the hike became a very pleasant one, following the creek up to Paradise Meadows. The mosquitoes I met at Kings Creek did not follow me up to this location, but the sun was out now, so that was not a surprise. I came upon the first cascade and was treated to a very pleasant surprise: it was still in shade! This was about 3 hours after sunrise, so it was definitely a shocker, but I was extremely happy about this. Nonetheless, the sun was trying to poke its way through the tree cover, so I didn’t have very much time. I scrambled down to the creek, crossed it on unsturdy rocks, set up my camera quickly and took my photos. It was a very pretty 27 ft. high cascade in such a gorgeous little location.

I then crossed back and continued up the trail. That is when I realized Surprise # 2 and Surprise # 3. I came upon the next waterfall along this beautiful little creek. It should not have been there. What I mean is that I was only expecting to find two waterfalls on this creek, but there are actually four beautiful cascades all in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 feet high. All the guidebooks I have read indicated that there are only two cascades, not four. That is because the trail only goes beside cascades #2 and #4. To get to cascades #1 and #3, you need to go a bit off the main trail, and I suppose these authors did not even bother with that (though really, I don’t know why – they are not hard to get to). I personally thought cascades #1 and #3 were the two prettiest ones on the creek (the one pictured here is #1). As a bonus, the first 3 cascades were still in shade (mostly) when I got to them. I was pleased as punch on this hike.