Leon Turnbull Photography

Ain’t nobody livin’ in a perfect world
And everybody’s out there, cryin’ to be heard
And now I got a new fire, burnin’ in my eyes
Lightin’ up the darkness, movin’ like a meteorite
All fired up
Now I believe there comes a time
When everything just falls in line
We live an’ learn from our mistakes
The deepest cuts are healed by Faith – Pat Benatar

Shootings of police in Dallas, School shootings, Intolerance against Christians and saying hateful words to each other on Facebook/social media, False teachers claiming to be Christian yet promoting hatred against homosexuals and saying it is good that they are killed (make no mistake, anyone who hates is *not* a Christian – Jesus loves *everyone*), breaking laws, stealing, hurting others, even littering. I don’t know about you, but I am All Fired Up and completely sick of all this hate and hurting of one another. It is easy to say let’s all just love each other, but it is not so simple. That will never work, because the real (root) problem is that more and more people in the U.S. (and more every day) have abandoned and turned away from God. They cannot truly love because God is Love. As this trend continues, the situation will only get worse, and not ever better. If more people loved God, then more people would love each other, and there would be less hate and killing in the world and in this country. This is what I believe. Jesus is the only one that can save us.

Well onto better things …

I was definitely All Fired Up about this waterfall. All week long I was anxious to get here. When Jadon and I were here last weekend, I glimpsed this falls from a distance, it was a big one, and still flowing quite well, but we had no time to go up to it. I knew I would be back here this week. I absolutely had to come back. And so I did, and brought Jadon again as well.

This weekend we saw no one up at the lake. We had it all to ourselves. No over friendly dogs. No crazy OHVs driving through the middle of the lake. We did see one family walking down from the lake as we went up. They parked their car down the hill where we did. Smart people. That road gets crazy rough, and I would not want to drive my SUV up there any further than we did. It makes for a longer walk of course. Jadon would prefer the easy hikes, but he did not complain (much). The weather was slightly, but only slightly cooler than the previous week, and I think it was actually a few degrees warmer than it was supposed to be. And the mosquitoes were still biting. There was a nice breeze up at the lake, and no mosquitoes there, but down the road there was no breeze and that means prime flesh eating conditions for the little buggers.

It is actually a pretty easy hike to this waterfall, and there was even a well worn path to it, which means many people have been up here before. I thought this quite surprising because I have never heard of this waterfall being here. I knew about the lower falls, of course, but no one has ever mentioned the upper falls. It is 93 ft. high, and for a completely unmarked stream, it seems to have very good flow in the early summer, though I think it would have been much better a couple weeks earlier. Next year, I am sure I will be back. This area is spectacular.

Too hot in the valley. Let’s head up into the mountains, I say to my son. Okay, he says reluctantly. As if he had a choice.

It is a short hike to this waterfall, if you have a four wheel drive. You can almost drive to it, but the road is quite rough, so we walked more than I expected to. I have not been to this falls before, but I’ve been wanting to go for quite awhile now, and it seemed a good one to do since I did not want to do much of a hike in the hot weather. The mosquitoes were out so we quickly lathered ourselves in juice. That kept them away for a short time, but they kept coming back to munch on us. I might need to get some better repellent.

We climbed up on an open rocky area in front of the falls where I took my photos. The mosquitoes were not at this spot, thanks to a little breeze. Good thing.

After this I suggested we climb to the top of the falls. I thought there might be more falls above this. I said to Jadon we will need to go around, it is too steep and cliffy right beside the waterfall. He said, what are you talking about. It is easier to go straight up. And so he did. I followed him up. He was right, of course, it was no problem to go straight up. We found a couple smaller cascades, then continued up to Crater Lake. Not the one in Oregon. Obviously.

I have never been to this lake before. I will be back. Probably within a week. What a marvelous and pretty lake, and the surrounding area is spectacular. We did not have enough time to explore it all, and that is why I need to come back here soon. You will see why later.

We proceeded to the outlet of the lake, where we found a family on the other side of the creek with a OHV. Did you cross that creek in your OHV, I asked one of the kids there. Yes, my dad did. He is coming back now. We watched as he crossed back through the stream. The water here was more than 2 feet in depth, possibly close to 3 feet. Another kid was in the backseat screaming in excitement. After he crossed, I said to him, I gotta get me one of those things. What fun!

There was a strong breeze at the outlet stream. It felt so darn nice and kept the mosquitoes away. I was thinking very strongly that I could just stay right there all night long with that awesome breeze. But alas, we had to hike back down to our car before it got dark.

Along the way we passed a campsite with a dog. The dog came out to greet us, and he was about the friendliest dog I’ve ever seen. Its entire body wagged, not just its tail. It gave new meaning to the term “wag the dog”. He followed us up the road for about a half mile, and had no intention of going back to its owners. I’m sure it would have followed us all the way to our car. I told the dog to “go back”, “go home”, “sit”, “stay”. Nothing doing. He kept following us. Finally I told Jadon to go on ahead, and I would walk back to the campsite with the dog. But he kept following Jadon up the road, and would not come with me. Finally I enticed it to come with me (with a bit of cold meat perhaps?). When we got back to the campsite, the owners were nowhere to be seen. I yelled out “hello!”. Where were they all? I waited for awhile, then I heard someone chopping wood and yelled out again “can you please call back your dog?”. No wonder the dog wanted so badly to come with us, having owners that did not care one iota about him or where he was. I think we should have let the dog follow us back to our car, and took it home with us. Yes, my wife would have really liked that. Seriously.

Out for a stroll this weekend, and I was up at 3AM. Ouch. I arrived at the trailhead at 5:30AM. This is the world famous and extremely popular Rubicon Trail. The parking lot was jam pack full with cars and trailers. Ouch. I expected there to be people and jeeps on the trail, but not this many. It is summertime. I had actually wanted to come on this hike much earlier in the spring, but this was the first chance I had this year. It was time to go see Miller Creek Falls. It was Miller Time. I managed to squeeze my SUV into one of the only remaining spaces.

Well hopefully I would not see any jeeps on the trail. Yeah right. Going into the waterfall, indeed I did not see anyone, but coming back? Hmph. As for the weather, it was a cool and very pleasant 37 degrees. A nice start to the day, but it would warm up quickly, and with the warmth would come nightmarish mosquitoes. I was hoping to at least get to the waterfall before the mosquitoes came out to play. I did not quite make it.

Along the way, I pass 4 alpine lakes. If lakes can be ugly (can they be ugly?) then these ones were ugly. Well, the third one was quite nice, but the others were just completely covered with vegetation, like a big bog. They were not very scenic. But anyway, I continued on. I could see the creek had quite a bit of water, which was a good sign, as I was not sure how well the falls would still be flowing since it is already summer. Now I just had to get down there before the sun. If I stopped at all, the skeeters were over me. Needless  to say I only stopped the one time.

It was a pretty easy hike until I got to the top of the waterfall. From there I could see nothing but cliff. How would I get down? I hummed and hawed, I was running out of time, I just decided to go for it. But carefully go for it, of course. No need to jump off the cliff. There was a perfect little ledge that took me right to the bottom of the waterfall. If it were not there, I don’t think it would be possible to get to the falls. Thank you ledge. Or rather, thank you God for putting it there. 

Miller Creek Falls is gorgeous, 54 feet high in total. And there was even more than this one. It is a very awesome little creek and I will be back here someday to explore it fully.

I lathered up in Skeeter juice for the hike back. Unfortunately, I did see quite a few jeeps coming up the trail. The first one was a Ranger, and he asked me where I was coming from. I believe he thought I was backpacking somewhere. I was wearing my big camera pack of course, and many people have mistaken it for a backpack. This Ranger will not be the last to do that. But if I was backpacking, then I would need a permit and I think that’s what he was wondering about. Actually, I did not know if I was in the wilderness or not at this point, and if so would I need a permit even for day hiking? I’ve been asked for them before when hiking in the Desolation Wilderness. I told him I was just on a day hike and down at the waterfall, all the while swatting the mosquitoes away from my face (he made me stop in a mosquito zone in order to talk to me). He let me go quickly, perhaps because he felt sorry for me, standing there swatting mosquitoes. I do wonder though if he even knew there was a waterfall down there.

After that I saw about 10,000 more jeeps and OHVs. I wondered where they all had parked, because the lot really was completely full when I had gotten there this morning. I hoped no one had blocked me in, keeping me stuck there all weekend. How nice would that be. By the time I got back to the car, I was thoroughly annoyed with them all for sure. For each one, I had to get off the road, stop and wait for them to pass, give them a polite wave with one hand, swatting mosquitoes with the other. I guess that is what you get for hiking on the single most popular jeep trail in the summertime, and on the weekend. Shame on me.

After work on Friday I took my son Jadon up the hill to go on an evening hike. It is rare he wants to go with me. I always ask him, and he almost always says no. I strongly suspect it is because I usually get up at bloody awful hours of the morning to go hiking. This time I would be going in the evening, and he said yes. Coincidence? Probably not.

Traffic was awful but we arrived at Squaw Valley Resort and started the hike in good time, however I underestimated just how long this hike would take, and I also grossly misjudged the off-trail section we would be doing. Off-trail section? There is no off-trail section, it is a fine, completely all on-trail hike up to Shirley Lake. Right? You forget who you are dealing with here. Well it was mostly on-trail, and although there are many indistinct parts, it is mostly marked and easy enough to follow, but it is still a tough uphill climb to the lake. There is a small waterfall along the trail that everybody stops and takes pictures of. I knew about this one of course. There is also a second small waterfall above it that I did not know about. It is difficult to get down to it and photograph it, and that is probably why I had not seen photos of it. Nonetheless I was able to get down to it without too much difficulty, but Jadon elected to stay up on the trail, safe and sound. Good choice. Nonetheless, I managed to avoid falling off the scary rock overlook.

Besides these two falls, there are two other bigger waterfalls in the area and this was my major reason to come on this hike, and this is why I was so bummed. The first one is off-trail. It looked so easy on Google Earth, but it turned out to be very brushy, much too brushy, with a difficult creek crossing as well. We tried, and maybe if I was by myself I would have tried to smash through that brush and cross the creek, but it was just really difficult. Because of all the off-trail shenanigans, it was 7PM by the time we got up to Shirley Lake. We had to go back down. As it is, we barely made it back to the car before dark, there is no way we could have continued to the second big waterfall. So yes, I got to see a couple small waterfalls I had not seen before, and Jadon and I had a fun time hiking together, but I was definitely bummed that I could not get to either of the big waterfalls. I will certainly be  back again someday to attempt to smash through that brush.

I got up super early for this one: one last hike on the Memorial Day long weekend. Way too early indeed. 3AM early.

The trouble with this hike is, and it’s why I have not done it before, is that the sun gets on the waterfalls very early and it is a very long hike to get to them, which makes it almost impossible to get to them in good light. However, I found a better way. I just was not sure if I could do it this early in the season, but good news: there was no snow on the road and I could drive all the way to the new trailhead. This might actually work after all.

Indeed, it turned out to be a very easy hike to the waterfall. Only 1.5 miles instead of 5.5 miles. That’s a darn good shaving. Very little elevation gain, and only a little bit of cross country hiking was involved, nothing too difficult. I got to the falls in good time and it was flowing great. It is 41 feet high and it is a beauty.

In case you are wondering, I purposely made a longer exposure of this waterfall than usual. Some people do not like the silky waterfall look with longer exposures, and that is perfectly fine, and I agree that in some cases it is better to use a shorter exposure. Mostly, though, only with powerful waterfalls, not with smaller waterfalls. I am adamant about this. A short exposure with smaller waterfalls like this one will make the falls look choppy and uninteresting. Be a better photographer. A longer exposure will give the image a very artistic feel, and that is what I was trying for with this shot. I think I succeeded.

I decided not to go down to the bottom of the falls, as the view from up above is stellar anyway, but also I wanted to try to get to the upper Falls in good light. I figured I could go to the bottom afterwards if it was still in shade when I got back down to it. However, finding the upper Falls was troublesome to say the least. It is not in the place where it is supposed to be, in fact there is no waterfall at all where it is marked on all the maps. Did it even exist? No wonder I’ve never seen any photos of it. I had to do some serious off-trail exploring through the snow, but eventually I found the upper falls and it’s a nice one as well. Photo is coming later.

By the time I found it, I figured the lower Falls would be in the sun so I decided to go back a different route thinking it would be much much easier. Big mistake. It was not only harder, but I got lost. Not really, but I definitely would’ve been seriously lost and likely still out there if I did not have a GPS.

The first trouble was that snow, which covered most of the trail. The second trouble was that the actual trail did not precisely follow the USGS topo maps. Despite the snow cover, I was able to follow the trail fairly closely and even if I missed part of it I always found it again quickly. Until …. I came to a big Meadow and swamp, where I lost the trail completely and there was no finding it again. The trail supposedly went right through the middle of the swamp, but who knows if it really did or not. Not wanting to go back, I just hiked along the Meadow to the end. It was not so easy to do but I made it to the end of the meadow, where I found the trail again. And just in time. The trail proper took off in a different direction down a gully on the other side of the ridge. Well all right, it will be a cakewalk from here, right? Nope. At the bottom of this little gully there was another swampy area. And I lost the trail again! This time was much worse. I got completely turned around from where I was supposed to be heading. However, all I had to do was just follow my trusty GPS and it led me in the right direction and back onto the trail proper. No problem. The rest of the hike was indeed a cakewalk.

I have been thinking a lot lately about that guy and his dog who got lost hiking in the Sierra Nevada. In addition, there was some other person who got lost out east on the Appalachian trail and died, within a mile of the trail. But I don’t really get it. There is no excuse for getting lost in the wilderness if you are properly prepared. These people did not have a GPS. Why would you not have a GPS? Or at least a Compass and know how to use it? If you do not have a GPS, you can download maps onto your phone (even if there is no cell coverage), and you can buy solar powered chargers for your cell phone, right? So there is no reason at all for getting lost. I always take my GPS, with extra charged batteries, plus I have downloaded Maps onto my phone for emergency backup situations, and a SPOT device for real emergencies. So there you have it. Be prepared, don’t die. That’s a good philosophy. Am I right?

http://waterfallswest.com/waterfall.php?id=lower-canyon-creek-falls-926