Leon Turnbull Photography

A cold storm made its way into our area on Friday evening, so cold that we were supposed to get snow at our house, which would be an extreme rarity. We were all excited going to bed Friday night. It was such a sure thing!

Alas, I woke up Saturday morning. No snow. How disappointing! I was wanting to go to the Auburn confluence and take some pictures in the snow there. But that is about the same elevation as our house, so I did not think I would have much chance of seeing any snow, but I decided to go anyway. I had to get the kids to church for Christmas play practice so I did not have time to go anywhere else anyway. Plus, my back is still hurting so going on a big tough hike in the snow at higher elevations was out of the question.

I arrived in Auburn and found a bit of snow on the ground, but nowhere near what was forecasted. As I descended the hill to the Confluence, the snow quickly disappeared. It had snowed down there during the night but most of it was all gone. I made my way to Black Hole of Calcutta Falls, which I had hope would be in the snow, but obviously it was not. It was not flowing very well either. We need a lot more rain here, and I see none in the forecast. It seems we are in for another extremely frustrating and disappointing winter here in the Sierra. Let’s pray January 2014 will turn around for the better.

Speaking of 2014, my waterfall calendar is now available. Get yours in time for Christmas!

http://www.waterfallswest.com/gallery/cal-2013.html

Here is yet one more photo from Abiqua Falls, Oregon. I was basically flat on my back in front of the TV all of Thanksgiving weekend. Normally Black Friday is my favorite hiking day of the year, and I had plans to do three big hikes this weekend. However, I put my back out the previous week and it was still not recovered. I could not even drive up north to see my family, so I was home all alone. It was not very fun. It sucked to put it mildly. I don’t like being so negative on Thanksgiving, I have much to be thankful to God for in my life, most especially my wife and children. But the weekend sucked for me. Oh well, at least I did not have to eat yucky turkey. haha. I am hoping this next weekend to get in at least one small, easy hike.

Unfortunately, it has been a very frustrating start to the winter, and the weather seems to be continuing from where it left off last season, meaning it is not continuing at all. We had a little bit of rain today, and another little bit is coming this weekend and maybe next week, but I do not see any big storms in the forecast, and we need some big ones. At least six inches of rain is needed to get the waterfalls going again, these little bits are not really helping too much at all. Sigh.

In other news, I hope you are checking out my new Waterfall Madman adventure videos. Here is Part II of the Feather Falls video. It is really better to watch it in HD, I am not happy with how youtube compresses the videos. I’ll be working on getting them better in the future. Please subscribe to my channel and share with all your friends!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDmSfhl93P0

Here is Part I if you missed it:

http://youtu.be/Vz7jeJa95ec

We received a much needed two inches of rain this week. This made me excited. Perhaps waterfall season is going to start here, finally. On Saturday, I made my way down to my favorite little waterfall, American Canyon Creek Falls. It is only 15 ft. high, but it is a charmer, and such a unique little thing, piping through an extremely narrow channel in the rocks. I love going here every year, and it is usually one of the falls I go to first thing in the season. It might be the last one I get to this season, as well.

It is an easy hike down to the waterfall, but you do lose 1000 ft. in elevation. When I got to the first creek crossing, I was a bit disappointed. American Canyon Creek was barely flowing. That two inches of rain did almost nothing to the creek level, and it was certainly the lowest I have ever seen it. The good news is that this waterfall does not need very much flow to look really nice. This is one reason I like coming here early in the season. In fact, if there is too much flow in the creek you may not be able to see it at all.

In order to see the waterfall, you need to cross the creek again at the base of the falls. This is very tricky or impossible at high flows, but definitely very easy at low flows. The water color in the pool today was a murky green, sometimes it can be a stunning vibrant green color, but I think it needs a bit more water flow for that. So … in order to create something a bit different than usual, I tried to create some long exposures, this one was two minutes long, I did some longer ones but was not happy with them. It really tries your patience taking such long exposures, but I had no where else to go.

After shooting the falls, I continued on down to the river, just for something to do. I did not find much, except for ticks. I have never ever seen so many ticks so early in the season. This is really bad news, and I think it means it is going to be a horrendous year for ticks.

Somehow, while down by the river, I tweaked my back. Oh my goodness. I don’t know how I did it either, I was not doing anything too strenuous. But now I had to climb 1000 ft. back out of the canyon with a tweaked back, and carrying a heavy pack. It was a SLOOOOWWW hike up to my car. In fact, I think it was a miracle I made it, by the time I got back home I was in agony and could not lift a thing, let alone stand up and walk. Next day it is still really bad. Just when waterfall season is beginning too. What bad timing. With Thanksgiving week coming up, I had three hikes already planned for next weekend. I might not get to do any of them now!

In other bad news, I lost my belt down on the trail. I took off my long pants for the hike back up with the belt attached to them, and tied the pants to my pack but did not secure the belt. I knew it but with my bad back, I did not want to stop and secure the belt, but I thought it would be ok. Guess what? It was not ok. Ugh.

God is awesome. He has answered our prayers in a big way this week. We had a lot of concern recently that my wife Tara might have cancer, and I won’t go into details but the test results came back negative on Friday. Praise the Lord. But it is not just that He answered that prayer, He did it in a very special way, answering another prayer at the same time, and that was re-invigorating our marriage practically overnight. After 15 years, we both feel like we are newlyweds again, and it is a real miracle. As I said, God is awesome.

This waterfall, however, is not awesome. It is not really very big either, only 14 ft. high. Nonetheless, it is a pretty one, and I think it was much prettier in person than seeing it in this photo. In the spring when the creek is flowing better, it would be even better I suppose. I think I would like to come back here, now that I know the proper way.

It started out being an easy hike down a logging road. Then the road disappeared shortly before reaching the creek. The main road continued off in the wrong direction. After a bit of searching I found an old road leading down to the creek. It was very overgrown. Why is nothing easy? I thought this would be a simple and easy jaunt to the creek and down to the waterfall. After scrambling through the thick brush, I came upon an easier path and made my way down to the creek, but I chose the wrong side of the creek to hack my way downstream. It was far too brushy. I followed what I think was a bear trail but the bears did not make it very easy for me. Eventually I came to a small cascade and no way to get down to creek level because of the massive honking boulders along the creek. The waterfall location was still downstream and I had no way to continue. So back I went. The old “road” continued on the other side of the creek, so I rock hopped across making my way upwards and onwards. There was poop everywhere. Not bear poop. Not mountain lion poop. Cow poop. What on earth would cows be doing out here in the middle of nowhere? I did not see any of the wild, killer cows. I made my way to an open area and descended down to the creek where I found this waterfall. The last section down to creek level was a bit too iffy, and I had not much time because I had to get back to the church for band practice (I made it on time but with only one minute to spare). There might possibly be an upper section here that I could not see, and thus I wouldn’t mind coming back in the spring. It certainly is a pretty little thing.

I totally forgot about this one for some reason. This is 24 ft. high Salmon Falls in Oregon, on the Little North Santiam River. We arrived here a bit before sunset, and the place was packed. It is a very popular area for swimming and fishing and jumping off the waterfall. There were a couple kids jumping just prior to us arriving at the waterfall, and quite a few people lounged out on the rock at the top of the falls. I had to wait patiently as the sun slowly sank, and while the crowd dissipated, which it eventually did. I still needed to wade out into the middle of the river to take my shot, as there were a couple fisherman that arrived late, and they were in my way, so I found a different angle from the middle of the river so they would not be in my shot. Meanwhile Tara and the kids and the dog waited patiently for me on the shoreline, along with the mosquitoes.