PARADISE REGAINED
I hate it when people complain about the rain and call for it to stop when we are still in the middle of winter. There are still 2.5 months of winter left! News flash: If the rain stops now then we will still be in a drought at the end of this winter and we will still end up below average for the year. Although with all these recent storms some areas are very close to the Apr 1 average already but other areas are not (especially the north). Also, we need much more than just an average year for the drought to end. Do you want to continue in drought and continue to have more fires than normal next summer? I sure don’t. California needs more rain not less. Stop complaining. But these people are going to get their wish. The rain is going to be stopping next week. Okay, end rant.
Anyway, I wanted to go hiking this past weekend but I did not want to drive too far. I decided to return to Paradise Canyon Falls on the Middle Fork American River. It had been a long time since I’ve been here and I did not have a good photo of it. With all the recent rain I figured it should be flowing quite well, much better than I’ve ever seen it before. Or would it?
I arrived at the trailhead and found that there is now a $10 parking fee. Ugh! What a ridiculous amount of money to pay for day parking at a state park. What choice did I have? I was going to be on a long hike. There was no way around it. I thought I could park back on the main road and walk in but you had to pay for parking there as well.
There was not very much water flowing in Mile Hill Creek at the trailhead. That was not where I was going but it was not a good sign. Then I came to the first creek crossing down at the river. There was so much water flowing in this creek it was almost uncross-able. Now that was a good sign. Paradise Canyon Creek also had a lot of water flowing in it. In fact, it was pretty much perfect. This waterfall is one of those that needs a lot of water to look nice. It certainly would have been much better a week earlier but then I would not have been able to photograph it. In order to photograph it you need to cross the creek right at the bottom of the falls. It was not an easy task and the water was deep. In higher water it would have been impossible. Even if I could have crossed a week earlier there would have been far too much mist. So Paradise Canyon Falls was about perfect on this day. Paradise Regained.
I continued on the trail along the river in search of other waterfalls. I did find a small one though it wasn’t really all that special. I ate my lunch and then hiked back. It was a perfect day in Auburn State Recreation Area.