Leon Turnbull Photography

So my wife was in Israel of all places this weekend, her boat ride on the Sea of Galilee being swamped by water, just like the disciples of Jesus. I’m kidding about her boat being swamped, but she was on the Sea of Galilee on the same day that we went to Swamp Creek. (not at the same time of course – there is a 10 hour time difference – or something like that).

It was a chore getting my kids up in the morning to go hiking. Neither of them wanted to go. They both gave me a hard time about it, and I was very frustrated with them, to the point where I almost gave up. Nonetheless, we all got in the car and drove up the road to the north.

The weather was a bit interesting today. One weather forecast said it would be sunny in the morning and cloudy later. The other one said it would be cloudy in the morning and sunny later. Which one would it be?!? The way it was looking, I was thinking it was going to be sunny. That is not a good thing for photographing waterfalls, and we were late starting as it was.

I have known about this waterfall for a few years now, but never attempted to go to it before. Thanks to a friend of waterfallswest, it was put back on my immediate radar, and now I knew it could be seen fairly easily. However … it required a hike along the active railroad tracks. The first part of the hike involved crossing the railroad bridge, a long walk over the bridge, and hope and pray that no trains come along. Have you seen the movie, Stand By Me? You know what I am talking about. This was a scene straight out of that movie. No trains came along, however.

After this, it is a pretty easy hike along the tracks to the waterfall. The grade is wide, and if any train came by, there was plenty of room to get out of the way. I think the hike to Mossbrae Falls is a bit worse than this one overall. Anyhow, we saw no trains. We made it to the creek, then hiked up the mountain to the waterfall viewpoint.

The waterfall is 170 ft. high in total, and it is a very marvelous cascade. The upper portion shown here is the big section, 120 ft. high. There is a 50 ft. drop below this that you can get down to the bottom of, and I certainly did that. The kids, however, did not want to go down to the bottom, so they waited for me up on the ridge. Jadon, I can certainly see not wanting to go down, but Nekoda is normally very adventurous. I don’t understand why she did not want to go down. It was not too difficult to get down to the bottom, and I took photos of the lower falls which is a terrific 50 ft. drop (pic coming in next post).

On the way back, we did not see any train, but we did see a vehicle come by us on the tracks. I thought he was going to stop and say we were not supposed to be there, but he just waved at us. When we got back to the car, it was raining (so not sunny, but rain!) I kinda wanted to do another hike, but I knew the kids would not want to do anything more, so we drove back to Oroville and had lunch at my favorite burger place, Jakes. Then drove home after that.