Leon Turnbull Photography

The second big storm of the month has delivered. This one dumped 7 inches of rain in the Northern Sierra foothills, and 5-7 feet of snow in the mountains. With one more big storm in the forecast for next week, we are on our way to seeing a true Miracle March. But more on that later.

For now, the waterfalls are rockin! I drove up to Oroville (again!) this weekend and up the North Fork Feather River canyon (again!). There were waterfalls flowing everywhere! Multitudes of unnamed streams flowing down the hillsides! The named streams and waterfalls were going off crazy! It was a water day! The waterfall madman was in Heaven! More exclamation marks!!

But where should I go? What should I see? I wanted to explore a certain creek that I had not been to before, which I learned about thanks to waterfallswest friend Jeremy. I knew there was a big waterfall on this creek that was fairly easy to get to. Or was it?

When I arrived at the creek, I found that it was snowing! There was a couple inches on the ground and it was still falling from the sky. I was only at 2000 feet elevation. I was shocked to see it snowing at this location. I pulled off the road, started to get ready for the hike, and took a wee alongside the road (it was a real emergency). It was at this point that a highway patrolman pulled up to me and got out of his vehicle. What are you doing? Are you all right? Yes, I am all right officer, I am just taking a wee and getting ready to hike up this creek to see some waterfalls, sir. Oh, all right then. I thought you were in need of assistance. I hope you have a fun day. Ok officer. Thank you, officer. Some parts of this story may be slightly exaggerated. But not all.

He left. I started my hike. I was already getting quite wet. The hike was short, and there was even a trail. Not that I could see it because of the snow. I encountered one obstacle on the way to the waterfall. It was a major obstacle.

There was an unnamed creek coming down the side of the mountain which I had to cross. On any other day, it would either be dry or a very easy walk across. Not today. The creek was rushing down the mountain, and below me, dropped off a cliff. This was no easy crossing! The rock on both sides of the creek (and in the creek of course) was wet and slick. If I slipped here, I would be sliding down the creek and over the waterfall. This was a deadly crossing. Sometimes I exaggerate my stories. Like for instance, the story above about the police officer. He did not see me taking a wee. He was just concerned that I might have had car troubles (it was very nice of him to stop). However, I am not exaggerating about this creek crossing (and I hope my wife is not reading this). It was potentially a very bad one. But … I had to go see this waterfall. Could I cross the stream safely? There was a branch over the creek. I grabbed onto it. I carefully planted one foot beside the stream on the slick rock, and stretched my other leg across onto the slick rock on the other side, then pulled myself across whilst holding onto the branch. I made it. Now the big question is how I would get back across afterward? It looked a lot worse going back the other way (and it was a lot worse). Well, let me worry about that later. Right now, I had a waterfall to get to.

After crossing the creek it was fairly easy to get to the waterfall viewpoint. It is a magnificent 67 ft. drop on this creek. It was snowing like crazy (as you can tell from the photo). It was amazing. If the ground was not so slick I probably could have gotten to the bottom of the falls, but it was a bit too much for me to try it today. Photos taken, now it was time to cross that creek again.

I did not want to go across in the same spot. I went a bit upstream to look for a better crossing. I found a better crossing. The only problem is that I had to put my boot right into the creek. It got very wet (obviously), but it was a more secure foothold and crossing. On the other side, I found myself hiking along the edge of another big dropoff on very slick terrain. Why did I not notice how bad this was coming up to the falls? This section kind of freaked me out worse than the creek crossing. Well I got by it, and back down the mountain I went. It was a great little hike to a magnificent waterfall.

I did go on a couple other hikes after this (and got even more wet), but I did not make it to any other waterfalls. Mostly the terrain was just crazy slick because of all the wetness. I shall return, however.