This was Journey’s first official backpacking trip and she was awesome! Of course you remember we had a trip at Mt Shasta recently which was supposed to be her first backpacking trip but we ended up sleeping in the car. This time we were sleeping in the tent. Come Hell or high water.
I have known about this waterfall for awhile and had been thinking about going here but it is about 100 miles past Nowhere, California. It is also in the sun most of the day so doing it as a day hike would be very difficult. It would make more sense to camp near the waterfall. I thought (or hoped) Journey would be able to do it as well. I had zero beta on this waterfall hike so I did not know how difficult it would be. There is a trail marked on my old topo map but it is not on the newer one. Does that mean the trail is now completely overgrown and impassable? Would Journey even be able to get down to the falls or would it be too steep for her? I had seen one photo quite a long time ago but I don’t know what happened to it. Well, everything is worth trying once. Right?
The last 10 miles to the trailhead is one of the roughest roads I have ever driven. It was horrendous. Very rocky, very sharp. My poor tires. Even worse than Bowman Lake Rd? The drive stressed Journey out (she doesn’t like car rides to begin with) and it stressed me out as well. On the return I thought I would try a different road thinking it would be much shorter and better but it was worse! I had to turn around and go back the same way. 10 miles of hell. We finally made it to the trailhead 30 minutes late and were relieved to get out of the car and begin our hike.
The hike is 1.5 miles up hill followed by a massive descent of 2 miles with 1700 ft. elevation loss. It was incredibly steep. It was going to be a brutal climb out the next day. Down at the creek is an old mining town from the 1800’s called Poker Flat. All that is left is an old cabin that is literally in shambles. A sign says the town was “a miserable hole”. I can believe it. We continued on to the waterfall. I was very happy to find a good, well defined trail. There was a sign that said “OHV trail” but there is no way you could drive your OHV on this. It is a narrow singletrack with steep dropoffs. Strange. However, it is very easy to hike. We came to the creek near the top of the waterfall and found a place to camp. It was small and not very exciting but I did not want to continue any further in search of a better campsite. This one would do well enough. Journey flopped out on the dirt for a nap while I set up camp and made dinner. She poked up her head when she saw me eating pizza and decided she had better come over to see what was up. Ha ha.
After dinner we went down to the waterfall. It was a very steep descent with brush at the bottom and required crossing the creek as well to get to a viewpoint. Journey did very well with all of that. Canyon Creek Falls is 45 ft. high and had a very decent flow for late September. It was gorgeous. If you look at Google Earth it seems the waterfall is at most 20 ft. high. I was incredibly happy to find such a beautiful waterfall and much bigger than expected.
We went back to camp and went straight into the tent and to bed. Journey slept well for the first half of the night but then was moving about and tossing and turning the rest of the night. I don’t know if she was cold (it wasn’t really cold, though) or she just could not sleep any more. I was the opposite, tossing and turning for the first half of the night. We got up in the morning and I made her a special breakfast and then we hiked out. Her pack was half the weight from the last time at Mt Shasta and she did much better with this. She was only carrying her water and not her food. Nonetheless, I knew she would really struggle going up the big hill so I carried her pack on this section. She did very well on the climb up the mountain and was ahead of me the entire way. It was a killer climb. We made it to the top in 1 hour and 45 minutes, including a 10 or 15 minute break. Not too bad, actually. Then the long drive back home. It was an awesome trip with Journey in Plumas National Forest but I can say with absolute certainty that I will never be back to that “miserable hole”.
