Leon Turnbull Photography

My favorite summer waterfall destination is Horsetail Falls. It normally flows strong all through summer, but this year, however, the flow is as low as I have ever seen it. Nonetheless, that low flow did allow me to get up close to this particular spot, which has never been even remotely possible any other time I’ve been here.

I arrived at the trailhead after work and made the hike up to the falls. There were quite a few people on the trail, as usual. Don’t all these people have to work on Fridays?

When I arrived at the waterfall I saw a big group of kids (pre or early teen) coming down from the top of the falls, with one adult leader. They were coming down the wrong way. I have to say that I hate this place. Now now, I do not hate Horsetail Falls, obviously, I love it … but I do not like the terrain around here. When I was younger it never bothered me, but now it kinda freaks me out. Does that mean I am wiser now, or just an easily frightened old fogey? It is very steep at the waterfall, with big dropoffs, and the granite rock is slippery and very dangerous, even when dry. Many people have died here, and if you are not  careful, you might be next. Well onto my story …

Most of the kids went back up the mountain to come down again the proper way, except three: the adult and two of the kids. The two kids were just wearing running shoes, with no proper grip for this slippery granite. They came down, somehow, to the top of this 50 ft. section of the falls (shown here). I am not even sure how they got to this spot, but there is no way from there to continue down on that side. They then proceeded to JUMP across the creek at the top of the waterfall. Did I mention that this rock is very slippery? One mistake and you are a dead man (or kid). They all made it. I was holding my breath the entire time. The last thing I wanted to do was fish a body out of the water from the bottom of the falls. Once on the other side, they then had to scale down the cliff to the bottom of the falls. It is steep on the other side as well, and again very slippery with big dropoffs. At the bottom of the falls, they jumped back to the other side again, where there is another smaller waterfall. I watched as they cleared the wet section of rock on their jump by mere centimeters. Oh my Lord!

I was just sitting there watching them do all this from my (safe) vantage point on this side of the waterfall. I swear I was not going to say anything to him when he came up past me. I wanted to say a lot, but I was not going to. Really. It is one thing to put your own life in danger, but quite another altogether to put the lives of your kids in danger unnecessarily. I don’t know if any of these kids were his own children, or not, possibly one or two of them was, but it does not matter. He is responsible for all of them. I wanted to smack him over the head. But I was not going to say anything. When he came up to to me, though, he said something or other, like that was not a very good route to take down. The words just came out of my mouth, I had no control over them, whatever spirit was possessing me at the time said them. I said: It was pretty darn stupid if you ask me. Ok, that was harsher than I wanted to say it. Like I said, I had no control over what I said. Well perhaps it was not really that harsh, he agreed with me that it was stupid. Maybe he learned his lesson and next time he won’t be such an idiot, and he won’t end up with a Darwin award.

Anyway, after they left, I then proceeded to follow in the footsteps of their stupidity. I am kidding! I did, however, go down to the bottom where they had jumped back across, and then rock hopped up the bottom of the creek bed to the base of this 50 ft. section of the falls. There were a couple tricky spots to be sure, and some of the rocks were quite slippery. I was careful and made it without incident. I sat on a big rock in the middle of the creek, enjoying this magnificent spot. Even with a little bit more water, it would not have been possible to do this.

The clouds over the valley were looking quite promising, so I stuck around for sunset. It was not electric, like I thought it might be, but it was decently colorful. That picture is coming up next. Then I hiked back to the car in the dark. This time, I had my headlamp. No worries. As usual, I was the last one off the mountain.