Leon Turnbull Photography

I tried to get out in between the storms this weekend. One forecast said it would be cloudy all morning. The other said rain all morning. Which would it be? Neither! It boggles my mind why they can’t get the forecast correct two hours into the future. I arrived at the Table Mountain trailhead and it was sunny. Well not quite. Table Mountain was on the edge of the clouds, Oroville was clear. So it was still clouded over but I would be hiking to the west where there were no clouds. Would I make it in time? That is the question.

The answer is cows. Huh? You heard me. Cows. The cows this day were the worst I have ever seen them on Table Mountain. It started off all right. Journey and I made it down to Hollow Falls. I took a quick photo and we continued on. There is a new fence up blocking the official trail to Crevice Falls. I didn’t understand why there was a fence but I think I was about to find out. We came upon our first cows right in the middle of the trail. It was a narrow section and there was no way around them. I yelled at them to get a move on (mooov-on), and they started running away down the trail. At this sight, Journey thought the chase was on! She wanted to run after them. She really tried. She is so silly. We finally came to an open spot. The cows had stopped but now we could go around them. A couple of them started to charge us. I yelled at them to stop. We were caught in between two groups of cows. They wanted to get to their friends. To gang up on us. One of them started mooing very loudly. This alerted more cows in the bushes that I had not seen and they started running away down the trail. Journey felt this would be a good group to chase as well. We came to the Beatson crossing and the cows were again blocking our path. I thought if I could get across the creek we might leave them all behind. Since I could not get to the normal crossing, I crossed a bit earlier and started climbing up the hill. Again, more cows. Again, we were caught in between them and both sides started charging towards us. Again, I yelled at them. Once at the top of the hill we were finally onto wide open land. There were more cows up here as well, to my chagrin, but we were able to go around them. Well around them. Well off the main trail. By this time I was quite stressed. The cows made me stressed. I felt like going back but there was really no path back except through the middle of them. We continued and finally arrived at Crevice Falls.

The sun was out now. I was able to take some photos of Crevice Falls before it got too bright. Now what should I do? I was not planning just to go here to Crevice Falls, I had an additional spot I wanted to try, but with the sun being out now and with all the cows, I just did not feel like going any further. In addition to this, I had decided I would go back the long way towards Phantom Falls since all the cows seemed to be congregating along the Crevice Falls trail. It would be a lot more mileage. I should have done that. However, when I got back to the Beatson crossing, there were no cows along the Crevice trail. Maybe they had all mooov-ed on? I decided to take a chance. Eventually we caught up to them and this time it was even worse. They were blocking the entire path. There was no way around them and they were not moving away when I yelled at them. We had to climb up the hill, through the brush and poison oak, and then back down to the trail once we got past them. I think I avoided touching the oak but Journey definitely touched it, so I hope I don’t get it from her. I was tired of all the cows. Journey was tired of the cows as well. If you know her, she would never get tired of seeing cows, but she was, so this tells you just how much and how bad the cows were today.

Finally we made it back to Hollow Falls where we had our lunch. It was a crazy day on Table Mountain.

5 Comments