INTO THE BAG MACHINE
The first time I came here, I did not go down to the bottom of the waterfall. I had thought that I would get a great view of it from the ridge but that turned out to be impossible. I went about halfway down the mountain and ran into a plethora of poison oak. I did get a partial view of the falls but I felt that I did not really bag the waterfall and I wanted to return again someday for another try.
This past weekend I returned with full intention of getting to the bottom of the waterfall.
It is a very long and difficult hike. There was a little bit of snow from the previous storm. I was surprised there was snow at all but it was only a couple inches, so it was not hard to walk through. When I got to the ridge I was already quite tired. I still had to go all the way down to the bottom, and then of course back up. I realize now why I went the wrong way the first time. It is very tricky to know the right direction to go and very easy to get lost. Once again, I started going down the wrong way (into the poison oak), but this time I corrected my direction and got over to where I was supposed to go down. There is less poison oak this way, but there still is a bit. It is STEEP! It is incredibly steep! I did not need to use my rope at all but the loose rocks made it very difficult and sketchy and there was quite a bit of slipping and sliding on the rocks, and hoping I would not start a landslide. It is a 600 ft. descent to the bottom. I made it down to the creek and still had to work my way upstream to the falls. This also was difficult and if there was a lot more water in the creek it would have been impossible. I had to climb up the rocks over a couple little cascades and had to put my feet in the water until I finally reached a good viewpoint of this glorious 212 ft. high waterfall. It was magnificent! Upper Shirttail Canyon Falls is into the bag machine!
I ate my lunch down at the waterfall. Relaxing. Resting. Finally it was time to climb back up the mountain. I was not looking forward to it. It was so hard. It took 3.5 hours to hike down and 3.5 hours to go back up to my car (plus about an hour down at the waterfall). Once again, I came across people shooting targets on the final section back to the car. They are so loud and ruined the last bit of my peaceful hike. I had hoped that since it was so late I would not see any of them, but no sir. And as usual I had to pick up all the trash they left behind, which (once again) was a lot. Why are these people so irresponsible. Argh.
Anyway, I had an amazing but very difficult day in Tahoe National Forest.