Leon Turnbull Photography

BLACK FRIDAY. It is my favorite day of the entire year to go hiking. While everyone else is out pushing and shoving and trampling others to get their favorite expensive TV, you can find me out on the trail. Or in this case, off the trails. These days it is more popular for people to go hiking on Black Friday but I was doing it long before it was cool. Nonetheless, even on the best of days you won’t find anyone else on this particular trail. That is because there is no trail. In other words it was extremely difficult. But oh yah it was awesome.

I left the house at 5:30AM. There were a lot of cars out on the road already. That is normally not a surprise on Black Friday but in these COVID days perhaps it is a bit of surprise. None of them were going in my direction since I was heading out of the city and into the mountains.

The road to the trailhead is a bit interesting. I could not find it at first and in fact I thought there was no road  at all anymore so I parked the car and started hiking. I finally found the actual road after a short walk so I went back to the car and tried to drive it. I got less than a mile and came to a huge mud pit. I did not want to drive through this and get stuck, so again parked the car and started walking. All that running around put me 45 minutes late starting my hike and added 9 miles round trip since I was now going to have to walk the road. I was prepared physically for the extra miles but not mentally. I was ready for a short difficult hike, not a long difficult hike. About half way along the road walk there was a huge landslide that had wiped out the road. Obviously I would not have been able to drive past this anyway. I suspect it has been there for years and they will never repair it. That also means the campground at the end of the road has been completely abandoned and not used anymore. It sure looked like it had been abandoned.

My biggest concern was that the creek would be completely dry. We had lots of rain in October but since then pretty much nada. I thought I would come to a dry creek after 4.5 miles of hiking and have to turn right around. Much to my surprise the creek had a very strong flow. The waterfalls would definitely be flowing nice. Now the next question is: can I even get to them?

There is no trail going up the creek. I came across occasional bear paths, or so it seemed, but essentially I had to scramble up beside the creek, crossing it numerous times to find the best path. It started out quite fun. Before long, the fun deteriorated into type 2 fun. Then type 3 fun. Then not fun at all. The route became more and more brushy. More and more difficult. More and more cliffy. More and more crazy.

I was almost at the first waterfall when I came to a complete dead end. There was no way to continue up the creek. Both sides of the creek were walled in by cliffs. There was no way around it. Somehow a friend of mine made it but I could not see how to do it. There was a big log to scramble over along the top of a cliff. It just seemed way too dangerous to me. I gave it a strong effort but I finally decided to turn back. By this time it was quite late and I was beat down tired. I had not really been planning to go to the second waterfall because of this, however, my route back took me interestingly close to the other waterfall. It was after 12PM but there was a good chance it was still in shade and perhaps it would not be so cliffy as the first one. It was certainly very brushy getting up to it but it was not cliffy. I made it. And it was absolutely gorgeous!

I reached the bottom of the falls, an incredible 163 ft. high cascade. The top part of the waterfall reminds me of Proxy Falls in Oregon. This is not Oregon folks. I was stunned. It was so beautiful. I don’t know of anyone that has been to this waterfall before. Hidden away deep in Shasta Trinity National Forest. No trail. Very difficult access. Type 4 not fun. And absolutely worth the effort to find it.

On the way back down I took a route straight down the creek back to the confluence thinking it should be easy enough (though perhaps not “fun”). Before long I had a big problem. I was cliffed out. There was another waterfall here and it was a big one. There should not be a waterfall here. How am I going to get around this? I certainly did not want to retreat up the mountain again and back down the route I took before. That would take forever. Fortunately I found a way around the cliff that was not too difficult and came to the bottom of this surprising waterfall. It was another beauty, this one 55 ft. high. (stay tuned for my next post)

It was almost dark by the time I got back to my car. I was essentially hiking from sunrise to sunset. I was beat tired. I was cramping. I was happy. It was another awesome Black Friday.