Leon Turnbull Photography

Well last Thursday when I realized that the Pineapple Express was powering its juice in to northern California, and we were going to be getting 7 inches of rain, I knew that the waterfalls would be roaring. Monday looked like it was going to be the best waterfall day, so I promptly asked my boss for Monday off. I was set to rock and roll. Now we just needed the rain. And it came.

We actually received 12 inches of rain in the foothills. Folsom Lake rose from 17 percent to about 27 percent capacity, and we are still getting runoff from this storm and will be throughout the week. And don’t forget the five feet of snow that fell in the mountains, which will be coming down eventually. Of course we still need much more rain but it is not quite the bleak sham that the media has been reporting the last couple days.

On Sunday the North Fork American River was up to 10,000 cubic feet per second, and that means ALL the waterfalls would be flowing awesomely. On Monday morning I was off to see one of my favorites, 134 ft. high Canyon Creek Falls. The river flow was down to about 6000 cfs, which was about the same flow as when I visited it in Dec 2012. One of these days I want to see this waterfall at monster flow, but I’m still waiting for that chance.

When I left the house, it was raining and foggy. You may remember when I visited this waterfall last time, I experienced a small miracle. It was raining, foggy, and windy and as I hiked down to the waterfall that day, I did not even think I would get to see it because of the fog, or photograph it at all. So I prayed to God to stop the rain, fog, and wind, and as soon as I got to the waterfall viewpoint, all three were gone: no rain, no fog, no wind. It was certainly a miracle and blessing from God. Well it looked like the same thing might happen again this year. However, this year I DID NOT ask God to stop the rain. We need every ounce of rain we can get this year, and I really would not mind if it was raining when I got there. I did ask Him to take the fog away though, because it would really suck to hike all the way down there and not be able to see anything at all!

I arrived at the trailhead and found another car parked in my spot. It had Minnesota plates, which was strange. What person from Minnesota would be out here hiking to this waterfall so darn early in the morning! There is only one parking spot at the trailhead, so I had to drive a bit further back up the road. As I came back down to that car, I was video-taping with my Go Pro camera. When I got to the car, I stopped and was making commentary for my video, saying things like, you know, why are they parked in my spot, who would be crazy enough to be out here so early in the morning, that kind of thing. Ok well after doing that, I continued on down the trail. After only a short distance, I realized I forgot my umbrella back at the car, so… I decided to go back to get it because it was “supposed” to rain some more that morning. I got back to the car, and lo and behold, there was a man getting out of the car, and getting ready to hike. He was sleeping in the car! And I must have woken him with my crazy commentary! Oh my gosh. I apologized to him for waking him. He was very cool about it though, saying that he needed to get up anyway. He was an old miner dude who had a claim down by the river, and he was going down there to pan for some gold. Geez, talk about embarrassing. I had no idea anyone was sleeping in the car!

Well anyway, la la la, off I went down to the waterfall again. Well this year as I hiked down to the waterfall viewpoint, there was no rain. There was no wind. There was also no fog. I guess all of that is good stuff, except that the sun had come out! It was not supposed to be out until around noon, certainly not this early in the morning! If I had thought the sun would be out, I would have started my hike much sooner than I did, and it looked like the sun was shining right down in the canyon, right on the waterfall. So I prayed again, this time: please God, don’t let the sun be shining on the waterfall. Well I got to the waterfall viewpoint, the falls was thundering down the canyon, much the same as last time. It is an incredible waterfall, and the view is spectacular, with the thundering waterfall on one side, and the raging river on the other side. The sun was not exactly quite shining on the waterfall, but it was almost on it. However, the viewpoint was all in sun, and that made photographing the falls from there very difficult. I continued further down the trail looking for a different viewpoint that was not in the sun. All I found was poison oak. And a lot of it. You can continue quite a ways, perhaps getting all the way down to the bottom, but it seemed far too brushy to try it. I came back to the main viewpoint and stopped again before I headed back up the hill. Enter stage right: thick clouds covering up the sun. Sweet goodness! The clouds made the lighting much more pleasant, and I was actually able to take some decent photos of the waterfall. Once again, God answered my prayer here. He is surely awesome. And so is this waterfall.

Finally! It is raining! Woo hoo! The waterfall madman is a happy camper! At least for one weekend, anyway. Praise God for the rain, seriously. This weekend is the FIRST major storm we have had in 14 months. We have had a few small storms, but I don’t think we had anything in which we received over 2 feet of snow in the last 14 months. That is incredibly awful. Usually in every month of winter we get at least one if not more of these big storms. But we have one this weekend finally. Over six inches of rain is expected in the foothills, and up to 5 or 6 feet of snow in the mountains. Now that’s what I am talking about, but we really need so much more still, so keep praying.

Anyway, Saturday rolled around and rain or not, you know I am going to get out there. In fact, I love the rain. Bring it on! And it did come on!

But where should I go? I really had no good idea. I finally decided on going to Nevada City and Kenebec Creek Falls. I have been there before, but there are some other potential new waterfalls in the same area that I wanted to check out. I thought I would go to Kenebec first, then hit some of the new ones.

Well, it rained steadily the whole day. The lady at the gas station in Nevada City told me to stay dry. I told her I had plans to get very wet. I am not sure she believed me. But I sure did get wet. In fact, I would not have been more wet if I had swam across the South Yuba River in all my clothes! The rain also makes it quite difficult for photography. But I did not complain! No way, Jose. I am just so happy to see all this rain this weekend. Anyway, I had an umbrella and tried to manage to keep it over my camera while I took the photos. It worked all right.

Kenebec Creek Falls was not really flowing all that great. It is a very small creek, but I have seen it much better. Indeed, it probably will be much much better Sunday or Monday, and although I do plan to go out hiking again this weekend, it won’t be back to Kenebec. I had hoped though, that it would have more flow than it did. It probably rained about an inch or so in the area on Friday. It needs a lot more.

After shooting Kenebec Creek Falls,  I went over to the unnamed waterfall beside Kenebec. I was at this one before when it was flowing much better. I should have photographed it then. Today it was not quite flowing too well, but I took a photo anyway. Then I did something a bit crazy. I went for an additional 5 mile hike in the rain. By the time I was all done, I was a drenched rat. Literally. Everything was completely soaked through, including my waterproof boots and waterproof gloves. I followed the South Yuba trail over to North Canyon. I thought there “might be” a waterfall there, and I wanted to check it out. I figured I should do it now, because who knows when I will be back this way. Well, I did not quite find a waterfall. But oh it was oh so close. I found a little cascade, and it was close to 20 feet high (my lower limit) and perhaps was, but it just was not quite interesting enough. It was just a small cascade, but the biggest problem was it was not clean, there were just too many branches obstructing the view of it. It was not worthy. And that was just sad.

It was a long hike out there for nothing, and by the time I got back to the car, I was far too wet to try going anywhere else. The other ones will have to wait for another day, but at least I got one decent waterfall to see at Kenebec Creek. It was a fun and very wet day.

Here is the next Waterfall Madman episode. Please check it out!

Here is another shot of beautiful snowy and icy Tamanawas Falls in Mt Hood, Oregon. It was a fun but very icy and crazy hike up to the waterfall.

I have a new Waterfall Madman video up from this hike. It is fun, crazy, and hilarious. Check it out, and please share with all your friends:

We left very early from Rossland to drive back to California. We take it in two days. The first day is about 500 miles to Bend, Oregon where we stay the night and drive the rest on the next day. I left a bit earlier than usual this time (much to the chagrin of my family), because I wanted to stop at Tamanawas Falls by Mt Hood along the way. This side jaunt adds 50 miles to our trip. It was worth it. But it was crazy.

It was overcast all day until we arrived at the trailhead in the afternoon. That’s when the sun came out. Ugh. Hopefully the falls would be in shade by the time we got to it. It is an easy two mile hike to the waterfall. Now when I say easy you should know by now that means difficult. My wife figured that out long ago. Nonetheless I managed to talk my entire family into coming along on the hike. Tara really did not want to come at first. I convinced her it would just be a leisurely family hike to the waterfall. Well it should have been that. It would have been that. Except for one thing I had not considered: ice! The trail was all iced over, making an easy hike into a very difficult and potentially very dangerous hike.

When we came to one spot where the trail started to go uphill on an icy slope, Tara had enough. She does not do ice and her boots have zero traction. The kids decided they wanted to continue on with me. That would have been ok if it did not get any worse. But it did get worse. Nonetheless we trooped on. In hindsight if I had realized how bad it was going to be I surely would not have taken the kids. Going up was not too horrendous but as it got worse my stress level raised exponentially. I had to keep both kids completely safe as well as myself. We went slowly. There were no deathly dropoffs except one and we stayed clear of it. Finally we reached the waterfall. It is a magnificent 100 ft high waterfall in a picturesque snow filled canyon. I did not bring my measuring sticks so I could not determine the exact height of the falls. I also photographed the falls from far back. There was a lot more treacherous ice to negotiate in order to continue any closer and my stress level was already at maximum. I didn’t think I could get right up close anyway so I decided to stay safely back and photograph from a distance.

The hike back was worse. Going downhill on ice is much more dangerous. We were very careful, going very slowly, sometimes sliding on our bums down the path. I would go first then Nekoda and Jadon would come down and I would catch them. I only fell one time and I took Nekoda down with me. Unfortunately that one time was enough to wrench my back out again. Argh. To top it off it was on an easy section, after we had gotten down all the difficult stuff. Jadon fell eight times he said, and again it was all on the easier sections. He was not happy by the end but both kids were real troopers and did awesome on this hike. We had a lot of fun.

There were quite a lot of other hikers out on the trail. Even though it seems the trail is out a long way from anywhere, it is a popular one. Most people turned back because of the ice and did not go all the way to the waterfall. However on our way back down we saw one family coming up the trail. They were coming up a particularly icy section. They had two kids, one boy about Nekoda’s age (8), and one little girl who was much younger. She was wearing rubber boots with no traction, and I could tell she had been crying. The father was not doing anything to help her up the icy section. (I was holding Nekoda’s hand the entire time to make sure she did not fall, especially on the icy parts). I told the mom it gets much more icy and dangerous up ahead. She ignored me completely. It was already getting quite late, and would be getting dark soon. The kids and I made it back to the car about 30-40 minutes before sunset. I knew exactly what I was doing on this hike and I knew my kids capabilities and I knew they were safe on this hike and I knew the time and I knew that we would be back well before dark. However, these people had no clue. If they continued to the waterfall as it seemed they were going to do, they would be certainly hiking back in the dark down an extremely icy trail and completely unprepared for the terrain. They (and especially the little girl) should not have been out there. It is just very stupid. Ok, end rant. Enjoy the photo.

Still no rain in California. But I still have faith. It is coming.

Some people think there is no water anywhere in California, but that is just not true. You do need to be looking in the right places, however. Hence my hike this weekend to the Little North Fork of the Middle Fork Feather River. Or LNFMFFR for short. Or LiNoFoMiFoFeR if you want to get a little silly. I like silly. I knew that this river would have some water in it, though I did not know how much. I was not expecting much, but I knew the waterfalls would flowing somewhat at least.

There is supposed to be a 30 footer on this river. Somewhere. I am more confused now about where it might be, or if it might be. I found a trail on my National Forest map going down to the river, though it is not on my Topo map, nor is it listed anywhere on the National Forest website or elsewhere. I thought it might be one of those old trails that no longer exists, and as such did not have much hope of finding it, but it seemed to me if I could find this trail down to the LiNoFoMiFoFeR, and once there, work my way downstream a short distance, I would find the waterfalls. I found the trail. It was actually a well marked trail and it seemed a well traveled and easy to follow trail, and it went right down to the river exactly where I thought it would. I found much evidence of an old mining operation down at the river, including the very interesting remains of an old mining bridge over the river. The trail is called the Sky High trail. Actually I lied. It is listed on the NF website, but I did not notice it because of the name of the trail: the name does not intuitively indicate you are hiking down to the Little North Fork river.

Another bonus: the river was flowing very very well. Much stronger than I would have thought possible. Why? I am not really sure but I think it might be snow melt that is happening since it has been so warm recently. Anyway, it was a pleasant surprise.

However, working my way downstream from here was totally out of the question. Steep cliffs lined both sides of the river. Going downstream was not possible. However again, there was a small waterfall right here, and this was actually one of the waterfalls I was looking for or so I thought, which I had initially figured would be much further downstream. The kayakers call this one Jaroslav’s Drop or something, but now it gets even more confusing because the kayakers say this waterfall is 30-40 ft. high. It is only 12 ft. high at tops! Although I was certain at the time that this was what was called Jaroslav’s Drop, now I am not so certain. I think there still might be a 30 footer on this creek. Somewhere. But where? If it is downstream, it will not be possible to get to it. Upstream the terrain seems too flat and unlikely for any waterfalls. It is a mystery, and more research will be required to find it. But I will be back again someday for sure. And perhaps quite soon.