Leon Turnbull Photography

My first mistake was sleeping in.

What I should have done is gotten up early, hiked down to the waterfall at the lower Canyon Creek Lakes (pictured here), and then continued on to Boulder Creek Lakes as originally planned. If I had done this, I do not know if things would have been better or worse for me (impossible to know), but in hindsight I definitely feel I should have done that. However, after my awesome first day with four waterfalls, I wanted to sleep in and have a relaxing morning. That’s it and that’s all. And that is what I did.

That meant I would have a very short day of hiking. Uh huh. Sure, Madman. Whatever you say. It was only 1.5 hours back down to the lower Canyon Creek Lakes. I arrived at 11AM. No one was camped at the spot I saw on my way up, which is where I wanted to set up at the end of the lake. It was a perfect spot. It sure seemed like a perfect spot. Why wouldn’t it be a perfect spot?

I ate my lunch. I set up my tent. I had seven hours to wait for the sun before I could go down to the waterfall and take photos. Seven hours! What could I possibly do for seven hours!? I walked to the end of the lake and back. That took 30 minutes. This is perhaps the biggest reason why I should have gotten up early instead of sleeping in. There was nothing else to do all day long.

In the afternoon clouds rolled in. I decided to go down to the waterfall and check it out. Since it was cloudy I took some photos. This was the smartest thing I did all day. It was easy getting down to it so I was going to come back later in the evening as well. Canyon Creek Lakes Falls is a very lovely 85 ft. cascade. I had not been to it before (it is not too far above the Far Upper Canyon Creek Falls) and I was not expecting to find such a nice waterfall here. This is why I wanted to make sure I got to this one in good lighting conditions and why I decided to take an extra day camping at the lower lake. It would have been a good decision … HOWEVER …

20% chance of thunderstorms … this was the forecast. What does that mean to you? To me, this means that worst case scenario you might see a quick thunderstorm in the afternoon, lasting no more than 15 or 20 minutes. At worst. Most likely you will see nothing at all. Am I wrong? I don’t think I am wrong. Certainly nothing that would be life threatening or into the danger zone. At 5:45PM it started sprinking. I moved everything into the tent, including myself. The thunderstorm started at 6:15PM. It lasted for 2.5 hours! The first hour was a bit on and off, with heavy rain and wind, much lightning and thunder. The last 1.5 hours it was all on, non-stop. Pelting rain. Pounding wind. Lightning. Thunder. Non-stop. The heavy rain and wind did not let up even for one minute. I am not joking. I don’t know how much it rained but at that intensity it must have been something like 4 inches. My tent held up well in the wind and rain. Except for one big problem. It was raining so much that pools of water started forming on the ground outside my tent. Before too long it had crept under my tent. My tent was now sitting in a big puddle of water. It was not a little puddle, it was probably one inch deep. There is no tent that can handle this condition, in a puddle of water! The water was now seeping through the bottom of my tent. I literally could not do anything about it. The rain was pelting and the wind was blowing my tent around like crazy. There was no possibility of moving the tent in this wind. I used my towels to try to mop up the water but it was not helping. The towels were soaked. My tent inside was wet. My sleeping pad was wet. I tried to keep my sleeping bag and pillow dry but was unsuccessful. They were now wet. My sleeping clothes were still dry but that was not enough. It was now a dangerous situation. It would be a cold night. If I tried to sleep in the wet tent and sleeping bag I could easily get hypothermia. I made a decision.

At 9PM the storm stopped. Finally! It was still a bit light out. I quickly packed up my gear and began hiking out. I would hike all the way back to my car in the dark. The trail is a good trail but there are a few places where it is difficult, especially in the dark. I lost my way a couple times but got back on track. There are a lot of overgrown sections and they were all wet of course, so now I was very wet. It took 3 hours and 20 minutes and I got back to the trailhead at 12:20AM. I warmed myself up in the car. I had a 4.5 hour drive home. I had to stop at a couple rest areas to take a 30 minute snooze. I arrived home at 6:30AM, hopped into bed and slept until about noon.

Did I do anything wrong? What would you have done differently? There was no way to know it was going to rain so much that day and certainly no way to know the ground would puddle where I set up my tent. I would have been fine if it did not puddle under my tent. It was probably just bad luck but fortunate I was able to hike back in the dark. It was a crazy second day in the Trinity Alps Wilderness.

4 Comments