Leon Turnbull Photography

We were off to Grandmother’s house for the longish weekend, but first off we would stop for a hike in the woods at Lassen NP and this time my daughter Nekoda wanted to come with me. The traffic was horrible on this weekend and it took much longer than expected to drive up north. In addition, I came across an unusually large number of incredibly rude drivers. If you are going to drive slow why are you staying in the passing lane? And then you get upset with me or block me if I want to pass you? What the h-e-double-hockey-sticks is wrong with you? Last time I checked you do not own the road. (Of course when I say “you” I am sure I am not referring to you the reader of this blog).

Anyway, sorry about that little rant. It was already after 7PM when we started the hike at the Lassen trailhead. That would give us precious little time to get up to the waterfall and back before dark.

The temperature was very cool. Considering it was over 100° in the valley, I expected it to be a lot warmer at Lassen. I knew it would be cooler than 100 degrees of course, but I thought it would still be quite warm in the mountains and the mosquitoes would be out, however it was cool enough that I had to wear a jacket, and the mosquitoes? None to be seen.

I wore my knee brace for the first time in a long time, to give support to my painful knee. It worked all right. There were a couple times I turned it the wrong way, and experienced searing pain for the mistake, but mostly it was good. This was a fairly easy hike but it felt good, and now I was not too worried about the big hike coming up. One thing I was worried about was the snow. There was still a lot of snow starting at 6800 feet elevation and increasing much more as we climbed up. By about 7200 feet, the trail was 100% under the snow cover and pretty much impossible to follow. There were a couple times it took a while to figure out what direction to go, and I wondered if we would even make it up to the falls. My next hike would be at a higher elevation than this.

The snow was hard packed and it was easy and fun to work on. You just have to be careful not to step in any big holes. There were a few of those. You could break a leg if you stepped in one. We were careful, though, and we had a lot of fun. Nekoda really enjoyed this snow walking. I told her that this is basically what I’ve been doing all spring so far.

In addition to the snow, there also were the creek crossings. The first one was a doozy. The creek was rushing very fast. We were able to jump across it on the rocks, but we still did get wet feet in the process. Nekoda has much shorter legs than I do, obviously, and I was concerned. It was a pretty big jump. She did it perfectly. This is the stream coming from Forest Lake, the same stream that the waterfall would be on – sort of. Sort of not though, exactly. Anyway, it made me think that the waterfall should be fantastic.

But it was not to be fantastic. The falls were flowing all right but not nearly as much as I thought they would be. In fact, I do not think this one ever really has great flow. Anyway, it was nice enough. I had to wade across the main stream to get up close to it, and it was quite deep and mushy. Nekoda waited for me on the dry side while I went to take photographs.

After taking the pictures, we had very little time to get down the mountain before dark. We hurried down as quickly as possible over the snow, over the river, through the woods,  and just made it back to the car when it was getting dark. Then it was off to Grandmother’s house we go. It was a lovely evening at Lassen NP.