Leon Turnbull Photography

Is it possible to get excited about a 13 ft. high waterfall? Yes it certainly is, if it is as adventurous as this one. The North Fork of the North Fork of the American River is a thorn in my side, and has been, like forever. It still is.

I almost did not make this hike. I am sick with a cold this weekend. On Friday night, I went to bed and slept horribly. I even turned off my alarm. I was not going to get up early to hike. But then I woke up at 4AM, and was feeling a little better. Should I stay or should I go? I knew that I would regret it if I did not go. And I knew that I would regret it if I did go. What a dilemma. Well guess what? I got up.

The road to the trailhead was far worse this year than last year. There are a few spots that seriously require a high clearance vehicle. Last year, I made it over them without difficulty, but this year I found that someone had built up the dirt mound, so I actually bottomed out going over them. The first mound I got by, barely, but the second one I bottomed out. It was very close, but no cigar. Ugh! I turned my vehicle around, then drove back up past that first mound, which I found to be more difficult going up then down, but I got by it. So now what do I do? Go home and back to bed? That sounded like a very good plan. However, I was less than a mile from the trailhead, and I drove out here all this way, so why not just hike from here? That is precisely what I did, of course.

I have a new backpack for backpacking, and today I was taking it out on a test run. It passed with flying colors, and I cannot wait to try it out for realz next week. You would not think I would need a backpack to go on a day hike, but I actually did today. The trail descends down to the river, then you need to walk upstream to a certain magical place called the Pool of Cold Fire. If you are ever here when the light is just right, you can understand why it is called that. The very first time I was here, I had that amazing light, but not in the times I have been here since. The trouble is, the river goes through a very narrow channel here, with towering cliffs on each side. The waterfall (waterfalls) are on the far side of the channel, and just out of sight. There is absolutely no way to get to the waterfalls without going through this channel. It is impossible to scale up the cliffs on either side of the river. The only way is to swim. However, swimming with expensive camera equipment is not a good plan. Thus we proceedeth with option 2: Buy a raft and drag it (or carry it in my new backpack) all the way down to the river, inflate it, and paddle up the channel to the other side.

I was rather nervous about paddling up this channel. Could I really do it? Would the current be too strong to paddle up, or instead take me far downstream before I could exit to shore? Would I flip the raft and dump all my precious camera equipment to the bottom of the river? What if I got to the other side and punctured the raft, then how would I get back? What if a big rock fell on me as I paddled up the channel? So many horror stories went through my fragile mind.

As it turned out, paddling up the channel was very easy, and very fun, and I had no problems. Until … I got to the other side. There is a big huge rock in the middle of the river, and another big rock protruding from the side into the river. The two openings on each side of the rock were far too small to squeeze my raft through. The river was very deep here, and there were no footholds to climb up on the rock. I was stuck. I could not figure out how to get by this obstacle, and I was almost ready to turn around in defeat. However, I saw that there was a large flat submerged rock, and I was able to get out of the raft and stand on it, while holding onto one of the other big rocks. I had to be careful not to dump out my camera equipment or the paddle, or even worse, let go of the raft and have it float by itself back downstream. It was also a bit sketchy to stand on, and tough to find good footholds, but once I secured myself, I dragged the raft across the opening to the other side of the rocks, then I lunged with one of my feet across to another submerged rock, which I pulled myself up onto, then plopped myself back into the raft. All was good. I then proceeded to paddle up the rest of the way to the end. Going back across that obstacle was much easier. Thank the Lord.

When I got to the end, I could see the waterfall around the corner. Not! It was hidden at the end of another deep pool, and around another corner. I dragged the raft through the deep river and up over some rapids and rocks, up to this other pool, then paddled across. At the end of this pool, I could see the waterfall, in fact it was awesome cool sitting there in my raft right up close to it. But there was no way I could take photos of it from the raft, and there was nowhere I could exit the raft here. So back I went, ditched the raft, and climbed up on the side of the sloping cliff. This was quite a bit sketchy, with dangerous dropoffs, but I was able to get in a position to photograph the falls, and back down safely afterwards.

This 13 ft. drop is actually only the bottom section of Lower North Fork Falls. There is an upper tier around the corner, and another drop just above. I had high hopes that I could continue up river from here, but there was no doing that. Again, the cliffs on both sides of the river were massive, with no possible way to continue up past this little waterfall. The NFNFAR has skumped me again. Well at least I got to see this little beauty. It was not a big loss at all.

Rafting back downstream was much easier and more relaxing. The hike back up to the car was not precisely relaxing, however. It is a very steep climb, and the gnats were out in force, I ate more than my fair share of them. Wasn’t there supposed to be a nice wind today? Apparently not. It was tough carrying the raft and gear back up the mountain, but the backpack did well and I am pleased with it. All in all, a fantastic day on the NFNFAR.