Birthday Falls
Happy birthday to me! I ventured out on my birthday to try to find a new waterfall and I found one! I must say that made for a great day. What better way to spend your birthday than scrambling through brush and poison oak, down steep mountainsides, and ending up at a fabulous hidden waterfall!
I definitely was surprised though, that I found anything at all. I was not sure if there was even a waterfall on Tiger Creek. Well, I knew there was one somewhere, but I did not know exactly where. And I thought it would be just a small one in the 20 ft. range, if there was one at all. The biggest thing though, was that on Google Earth the terrain looked very brushy and steep. I did not think I would even get down to Tiger Creek at all. As it turned out though, it was not really too steep or too brushy. Certainly I have done much worse in my days. I made it down to the creek where I thought the waterfall might be without too much difficulty. But there was no waterfall there. Just a very small little drop, maybe 10 ft. or so in height. That was not what I was hoping for. Maybe there was not any waterfall on Tiger Creek at all. Well, I thought, it might be upstream. I had marked a secondary location possibility on my GPS, about a half mile up the creek, so I headed up in that direction. And when I got there, I found a very nice little 20 ft. falls. It made me very happy that I had found a decent waterfall on this creek. I had to photograph it from the other side of the creek, so I put on my water shoes and went across. It was EXTREMELY COLD. While photographing the waterfall on the other side, I saw that there was an upper (and larger) waterfall above it. This made me even happier! I took my photos, went back across, tried to warm my numb feet, put on my hiking boots, then went on to this upper falls. It was really a beauty, a 2 tier drop totaling 43 ft. in height. It would have been perfect if it were not for a large tree that was blocking the view. The only way, again, to photograph it would be from the other side of the creek, but this time, it was not possible to get across. It was flowing too fast up here and too deep. With a little less flow, it could have been crossed quite easily I think. But I didn’t really want to fall and go over that 20 footer below. So I tried to photograph it as best I could from this side. The photo pictured here is the middle tier (the upper tier is immediately above and out of the picture). I will definitely be returning to this one someday.
http://www.waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=599
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