Leon Turnbull Photography

Last year, I took my son backpacking to West Cherry Creek, the upper part of the canyon. I said at that time that West Cherry Canyon was one of the most stunning places I have ever seen. This year, my top goal was to backpack into lower West Cherry Canyon. This past weekend I accomplished this feat, and again, I found the lower canyon is just as magnificent as the upper canyon. It was absolutely glorious and I found three fantastic waterfalls.

I am watching this Youtube channel of a Sierra backpacker whom I really like, but in his latest video, he said something that I found a bit odd. He basically said that he has nothing more to show on his channel. He has seen it all and shared it all from the Sierra Nevada. Really? The truth is he has not even scratched the surface of the Sierra Nevada. There is so much more to see. No one can see it all in a lifetime. Not even John Muir. I wish that all the followers on his channel would come over to my “waterfall madman” channel instead. I assure you, I have plenty more to share from the Sierra Nevada.

Lower West Cherry Canyon is a perfect example of this. There are no trails down into this canyon. I saw no evidence that anyone had ever been down there (well, almost none). I was a bit surprised by that. As I said, it is one of the most stunning canyons I have ever seen. I wanted my son, Jadon, to come with me again, but he refused to come this year. It was a little harder than upper West Cherry, but I am sure he could have done it.

The first part of the hike is along a dirt logging road and is very easy, gently gaining a few hundred feet in elevation. I could have driven further, but there was a downed tree blocking the road, so that meant I had to hike five miles on the dirt road. No big deal. I had all day. There were actually many trees down on the road, so it was not just the one that was stopping me. I saw a bear. A big brown one. It was only about a hundred feet in front of me, and it did not see me at all! It just continued meandering across the road and off to the other side. Because it did not see me, I was able to get my iPhone out, and I got a small snippet of video of the bear before it went off into the bushes on the other side. I’m not too sure how well the video turned out, but at least this time I have proof that I actually saw a bear (in case no one ever believes me).  I wonder if this is the year of the bear for me? A couple years ago, it was the year of the coyote. I saw plenty of those creatures that year. So far this year, I have seen three bears in two backpacking trips, so maybe it is the year of the bear. I hope so!

After five miles, I came to the spot where I needed to drop off the road and down to the bottom of the canyon. It is a 1300 ft. descent, and as I said there are no trails. Not true! I started out following a bear trail down into the canyon. It was definitely a bear trail and not human, because there was plenty of bear scat all over the trail. At least it was going the right direction, but them bears do not generally go where I want to go. Eventually I lost the bears and continued straight down. Now I came across the remnants of what seemed like an old human trail. This was the only human evidence I saw all weekend down here. It was very faint and hard to follow, but I guess it means others have definitely been down here at some point in the past. The descent is only 1.5 miles to the bottom, but it took two full hours. It was difficult and very slow going. There was some brush near the top that took some time to negotiate. Near the bottom, it opened up into granite rock (with stunning views), but it became quite cliffy. It should have been flattening out and getting easier. Instead, it was the opposite. It took a long time to find ways around these big granite drop-offs.

Eventually, I got down to the river – er I mean creek. West Cherry Creek was huge. I am not certain if peak snow melt has occurred yet in the Central Sierra, so I’m thinking the flow in the creek was around peak flow for this year (4400 cfs on the inflow to Cherry Lake – of which the west branch is half).

My initial plan was to camp up at the big waterfall. However, I could easily see that it was going to be very difficult to get up there, and perhaps it might not even be possible. There was another big waterfall I would have to climb up and it was bigger than I imagined (the second of the three waterfalls). I was also very tired from the hike down. I decided to go downstream to the third waterfall and have lunch there. After a rest, I would hike up to the big waterfall and find a campsite. I also wanted to see if I could even get down to view the third waterfall (I was not at all certain it would be possible).

The third waterfall on lower West Cherry Creek is located at the confluence of West Cherry and Cherry Creeks. When I arrived there, I found the most perfect campsite. It is a stunning location at the confluence with tremendous views upstream and downstream. I could also see that it was going to be possible to get down to see the third waterfall after all. Without a doubt, this was going to be my campsite for the night. I had my lunch, then setup my camp and relaxed for the rest of the afternoon. I absolutely made the correct choice.

After dinner, I went upstream to photograph the first two waterfalls. It was not too difficult to climb up to the top of the middle falls and continue up river. However, we had an obstacle to overcome. Below the first waterfall, West Cherry splits into three separate channels, all significant, and continues on these separate channels for some distance until they come back together at the middle falls (which, as you can imagine, is three different waterfalls coming together at one spot – an incredible sight and I will share those photos later). I tried to continue upstream, but it became too difficult because of that first channel. It was clear I had to cross it. In some spots, it would be impossible to cross this creek, but I found a safe spot to wade across, and once across, it was easy to continue up to the first waterfall. However, I had to cross that creek again just below the first waterfall. It was a bit more difficult, but I managed to get back across.

Now I had a marvelous viewpoint of Lower West Cherry Creek Falls, 60 ft. high, and raging to all ends. I had about an hour to wait for the sun, so I explored a bit above the falls, and then rested, snacking, and just enjoying the moment. It was glorious.

After this, I went back downstream to photograph the middle and lower falls, then went to bed, very tired and very happy. I slept extremely well that night to the sounds of West Cherry and Cherry creeks.

 

 

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