BRUSHFEST
This weekend I was off to the Highway 70 corridor in Plumas National Forest for the first time this season. I suspect it will be the first of many times this winter. Where else can I go this winter? The other side of Oroville (Feather Falls) is closed due to the fire this summer, and I suspect it won’t be open for at least 1 year. The Bay Area? The coast? Much of the central coast is also closed from fire. I will probably go to the Bay Area, but only if it rains a lot, otherwise it is pointless to go there. So that mostly just leaves the North Fork Feather River in Plumas National Forest.
For this trip I really wanted to make it to Lower Chambers Creek Falls which I have not been to before. I figured it would be a sure thing and a fairly easy hike. Ummm, not so much. I made it (as you can see), but it was definitely not a sure thing.
I have tried this hike before, after my friend Jeremy first told me about it a couple years ago. He followed the creek up from the highway. I did that, and failed. You cannot go that way if the creek is high. It requires multiple crossings of the creek and this is a large creek. I thought of a different route, going down from the Chambers Creek Falls trail. There is an obvious path there, and it is marked with ribbons, so that must mean it is an easy way down to the falls, and others have gone down there that way. Right? Nope. That obvious path ended abruptly in about 10 seconds. A wall of insurmountable brush was before me. Well, that is not going to work at all. I tried a different spot. It also was incredibly brushy. The entire area is very brushy. (understatement of the year). My route was indeed brushy but I was able to keep going for awhile. Did I mention there was a lot of poison oak as well? I almost turned back. I did not think I would make it down. But I continued. I had to give this my best effort. I did not want to fail again. I made it through the brush (finally), and got down near the top of the waterfall and found … CLIFF. All around me was a huge cliff and I could see no way down. This time I did give up. I decided to retreat back up the mountain. There was just no way to get down the cliffs. However … on the way back up I saw one more possible route down and decided to give it one last try. Lo and behold! It worked! I was able to follow this route all the way down to the creek below the waterfall. Whew! That was incredibly difficult and tiring just to get down to the creek (and let’s remember, I still have to go back up!).
Lower Chambers Creek Falls is a very gorgeous 73 ft. high waterfall dropping into a beautiful pool. It is an amazing spot and you can climb out on the rocks in the middle of the creek and get right in front of the falls. I enjoyed my time here, ate my lunch, rested, tried to sike myself for the climb back up the mountain. I could not do it. You see, the flow in Chambers Creek was very low. I was expecting the creek to be uncrossable, but instead it was very easily crossable. This is a large creek and they received 5 inches of rain here this past week. It should not be this low, but I guess that tells you we sure need a heckuva lot more rain. Anyway, I thought … maybe with the creek so low it would not be all that difficult to just follow it back down to the highway. That should be much better than climbing back up the mountain. So that is what I did. There were definitely a couple tricky spots, including down climbing a small 15-20 ft. waterfall, a couple creek crossings, a bit of brush, but overall I think I made the right decision. It was certainly a lot better than climbing back up through all that brush. Once down to the bottom, I had an easy one mile walk along the highway to my car at the Chambers Creek trailhead. It was a brushfest day in Plumas National Forest.