DAY 1. ISLANDS IN THE STREAM
It was a long weekend. The weather was good. So I went backpacking. I wish it was raining. We have had a horribly dry February, and I’m not confident anymore that we will have a miracle March this year. I will take what I can get. If the weather is good on a long weekend in February then I will go backpacking to waterfalls that I know are flowing well. So off I went into the Mokelumne Wilderness.
When I picked up my permit on Saturday morning, I saw there was one other envelope for someone else backpacking this weekend. The ranger had written on the other person’s envelope: Have an awesome adventure! On my envelope she just wrote: Remember to sign your permit. I was very upset about this. Just kidding. But seriously, I am 100 percent certain that my adventure was way more awesome then this other person’s adventure, wherever he or she was going. So where was I going, anyway?
Salt Springs Reservoir: My goal was to hike to Fantasy Falls. The very remote and very mysterious Fantasy Falls. I have tried twice before (day hiking), and failed. We will talk about this more a bit later.
I started hiking at about 8:30am. There was no one around at the reservoir, and I saw no one the entire weekend. Not surprising, really. It is winter. Who wants to go backpacking in winter? But still, one might see fishermen there. It is a long weekend after all. But nope. The reservoir was very low. Extremely low. It should be much fuller by mid February, but we have had a horrible winter thus far. We really need that miracle March again. Please let it rain, Lord.
It is about a 6 mile hike to the end of the reservoir (though the end of it was empty). There were ticks, poison oak, and gnats. I expected the ticks and oak, as I have been here before. But the gnats!?!? They were bad. Not nearly as horrendous as at Tehipite Valley, not even close, however they were very annoying. Why are there gnats in February? There should not be any gnats in February! I can deal with ticks. I can deal with oak. I can deal with gnats (except at Tehipite). I cannot deal with all three at the same time. Anyway, I had no choice but to deal with all three of them. I managed to avoid getting any ticks on me, and I had thought I had completely avoided the oak, but apparently not. I do have a rash.
When you get to Island Slide Falls you come to a dead end. There is no way to continue up the river to Fantasy Falls. The cliff comes straight down into the river bed. I could not cross the river. It was flowing at about 250 cfs and was not crossable. The only way is to go up and over the cliff. Getting up is not a problem, but getting down the other side is a problem. Actually, it was a huge problem because the other side is one immense and entire cliff. There is absolutely no way down. I scoured the entire length of the cliff and I found zero possible ways down. Now it was almost sunset. I had no choice but to retreat and go back down to Island Slide Falls, and camp there for the night. This was strike three for me. The first two tries were day hikes: the first time I ran out of daylight and did not even attempt getting over the cliffs. The second time I went the wrong way and again had to retreat. This time, I really thought I had a great route and was very confident I would make it all the way. I was not counting on that huge cliff and there being no possible way to get down it.
Well, I found a nice little spot close to Island Slide Falls. I barely had enough time to setup camp, eat my dinner, and take photos of the falls before dark. It was a very tiring day, but it was beautiful beside the waterfall and the North Fork Mokelumne River, and the sunset on the river was spectacular. It was a long weekend and I still had a couple more days. What could I possibly do the next day?