Trail Blazer
Well we were supposed to get snow Friday night in the Sacramento area. I was expecting (not really) to wake up to a winter wonderland Saturday morning in Folsom. It would have been nice. But I did anticipate that Auburn would have a nice dumping Friday night. It did snow there on Friday morning I guess, but they were supposed to get more Friday night and that did not happen. When I arrived in Auburn first thing Saturday morning, all the snow was gone. I was hoping to get some snowy shots down at the Confluence, of the No Hands Bridge along the river, and I was also planning to go to the Black Hole of Calcutta Falls, hoping for some snow there as well. With no snow, the No Hands Bridge was out of the question. I considered going to the waterfall, but I already have a good shot of that one, so I nixed that idea. Time to implement Plan B.
Plan B turned out to be an ideal choice. And a fantastic adventurous one as well. My idea was to try to get to a waterfall on Clipper Creek, about 1.5 miles upriver from the Confluence. I did not really think I would be able to make it. I was certain there was no trail, that it would be too brushy, too tick infested, too poison oak infested, and worst of all, much too cliffy to get up that far. But hey, I am always up for an adventure and a mad scramble through brush and poison oak. There certainly was a lot of poison oak. I knew that, and I anticipated that, but that was the least of my worries, so I thought. When I tried this route last year, I got turned back by ticks. In the spring, this whole area is infested with the buggers. I have said it many times, I can handle the poison oak, but I cannot handle the ticks. But I figured this was a good time to go, with the recent cold weather, perhaps they would not be lurking about. And I was right again about this. I only had to pluck a single one of the little beasts off me today.
As for the rest of it, I was pretty much completely wrong. And that made me ecstatic. What I mean is that there was indeed a trail to follow. And it went from the Confluence all the way up to Clipper Creek and beyond (likely, all the way to Lake Clementine). It was an old trail, and certainly overgrown, but hey, it was a trail. No bushwhacking through thick brush and along steep cliffs. That was my next worry, as I knew there were steep cliffs on this side of the river. But the trail seemed to bypass these cliffy sections quite perfectly. There were no dangerous sections along the trail at all. It was certainly not an easy hike, that is for sure. But it was definitely an adventurous one, and one that I will do again for certain.
As for the waterfall, well it was a dandy. It was smaller than I expected. The topo maps seem to indicate a waterfall in the neighborhood of 60 ft. or so, and I measured this one to be 27 ft. high. I was a bit surprised at that, as it seemed quite a bit bigger than that, but hey, 27 ft. is not shabby, and it definitely was worth the effort to get to this one. As Arnold says, I’ll be back.
http://www.waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=628