Leon Turnbull Photography

This was an extremely difficult waterfall to get to, there was a ton of poison oak, steep terrain, and I did not even get as far as I wanted to. But I did find this new 38 ft. high waterfall, so all was not completely lost.

This is Peavine Creek, near Foresthill. From Mosquito Ridge Rd, it is more than a 1400 ft. drop down to Peavine Creek. There is no trail. The poison oak is very abundant, especially as you get closer to the creek. I did not feel very comfortable hiking down into this canyon, for many reasons, some of which included wild animals jumping out of the wooded trees onto me. I thought multiple times about giving up and going back up. Usually these thoughts were most numerous in my head when the going started to get too brushy or the poison oak got worse. Then the terrain would clear a bit, and I decided to keep going. Down. Down. Down.

After a long struggle, I finally got close to the creek. Then it started getting much steeper, and the oak got much more plentiful. There was no avoiding the stuff anymore. When I got to the creek, I started working my way upstream. I still had a long way to go. I came to a couple small waterfalls where the creek split. The best way was to climb up between them. Off came my hiking shoes and on came my water shoes. Above these small waterfalls, I could see a larger waterfall in the distance, and this was my final destination. I measured it to be 38 ft. high, and it was difficult to photograph. I do not really like the big log sticking out in the middle, but I could not move any further to the right or I would be swimming. My camera also stopped working here for some reason. I have no idea why, and it seems to have fixed itself magically now, so perhaps God was telling me not to continue further.

I had no intentions of continuing on anyway, so God did not need to tell me that, but I am pretty sure there is a bigger waterfall above this one. It may or may not have been possible to get to it, but I was completely spent by the time I got to this one, and there was no way I could continue any more. Oh yeah, I still had to climb back 1400 ft. out of the canyon.

When I finally got back to the car, I found that I had a couple ticks embedded in me. It has been many years since I have had a tick bite. I am always very careful about checking myself constantly during hikes, but somehow these ones snuck under my clothing without me noticing. One was on the back of my arm, and I managed to get it out, but the other was on my back and I could not see it. I only saw it by the reflection in the window of my car when I checked myself over. I tried to pluck it out, but I was not certain I got all of it. I could not see “back there”. I was concerned so I decided I would drive quickly back down to the river where there surely would be people around I could get to help. On the way down, however, I saw a couple bicyclists ascending up the hill. I stopped and asked them if they would look at it. I am quite certain they thought I must have been some kind of maniac, because they were very hesitant about stopping. I do not blame them at all. Some weirdo saying he had a tick in his back way out in the middle of nowhere? Finally the guy turned around and came to look at it, and he was able to see that I had indeed gotten the entire tick out. Well I was sure glad about that and I thanked them profusely for stopping to help out the maniacal stranger.

So will I be back someday to do battle with the ticks and oak again? Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. Probably I will.

Here is the latest Waterfall Madman video. Feel the roar at Bassi Falls:

This week has been very warm. The snow has been coming down all in one fell swoop. In fact, I think that in a matter of a couple days, we have already now reached and have gone past the peak of snow melt. There will not be very much snow left up in the mountains after this week.

All this means that the waterfalls are gushing right now. If you want to see any this year, you had better get up into the mountains now. It will not last too long.

And so I decided it was the right time to make my annual pilgrimage to Bassi Falls to see some hot diggity snow melt action. I suspect that I am the first one to visit Bassi Falls this year. I suspect I am the first who even thought of going there already. It is only mid April. Isn’t there still far too much snow on the road? Not this year my friends. The snow is kapoosh. But that does not mean you can just drive right to the trailhead. Even though there is no snow and it should be open, the road was gated at the turnoff near Ice House Rd. I knew this would be the case however, and expected to have to walk from Ice House Rd, but it is only an additional 1.5 miles, so it is no great difficulty.

The morning is not the best time to photograph Bassi Falls, but it was my only option for this weekend. It was also the weekend for our church’s annual all night prayer vigil. I signed up for the 4AM time slot, with the intention of driving up to Bassi Falls for sunrise afterwards, but time was of the essence because I had to be back at the church for a meeting at 9AM. I planned everything to a tee. Almost. I arrived up on Ice House Rd at 5:30AM in the dark. I could hear the roar of Bassi Creek though I was quite a distance away from it. Is that really the creek? Or is it the wind in the trees? There was no wind today. Well that certainly boded well for my hopes for the waterfall.

I arrived at Bassi Falls at about sunrise. It was crazy flow. Awesome roaring snow melt. I have seen Bassi Falls at much higher flows in prior years, but I am not sure it is going to get any better this year. As I said, I think we are already past peak flow. We’ll see if I am right. Maybe we will still get a lot more rain.

I moved up the left side this time, trying to get a closer shot of the waterfall, and waded through the freezing cold creek to find this little pool for the foreground. I think there are better angles for Bassi Falls, but I think this one works all right. I was just trying something different.

Now I had to boogie back to the car and drive to the church for that meeting. As I said, I planned everything perfectly, and I almost made it in time. Except for the stupid McDonald’s where I stopped to get some breakfast. I had to wait 15 minutes for my food! Unbelievable. That made me 10 minutes late for the meeting. Sigh. Well, at least I was forgiven. 🙂

This is Hidden Falls, on North Table Mountain, Oroville. It is definitely quite hidden. It is also definitely quite a difficult waterfall to photograph, there are not many angles to photograph and no foreground to use. Only the bottom tier of the falls can even be seen. The top tier is “hidden” out of sight behind the rock.

The FINAL snow pack data is finally in (actually, I meant to write this on my last post). The results, as expected, are very piddly. Northern Sierra Nevada: 24 percent of average snowpack (last year 46%). Central Sierra Nevada: 40 percent (last year 55%). Southern Sierra Nevada: 31 percent (last year 38%). The reservoirs current levels: Folsom: 50 percent (last year at this time: 65%), Oroville: 51 percent (last year 86%), Shasta: 51 percent (last year 85%). As you can see, this latest storm did increase the snow pack a bit (from about 15 percent to 30 or 40 percent). However, that is still way below average, and the reservoirs are only at 50 percent, there is not enough snow in the mountains to fill them or supply our needs in the summer. I am still hoping and praying we get one more big storm this year. There is still plenty of time for that.

The snow has already started melting in the mountains as of this week. It has been very warm out this week. In fact, the river levels are pretty high this week, and the waterfalls, if you can get to them, will be flowing now in the mountains. I do not expect this to last more than 2 or 3 weeks this year. Now is the time to go see the waterfalls in the mountain, people. Do not wait long. There is not very much snow to melt this year. Peak snow melt is right now. Get out there!

Here is the video of our trek to the base of Phantom Falls that I made with my friend Mountain Goat Rob. It is hilarious, thanks to him, so you gotta check it out. Please watch in HD:

For a couple years now I’ve been wanting to get a sunrise shot of Phantom Falls with the wildflowers in bloom and the waterfall flowing and the sky in painted colors. The flowers on Table Mountain are going off the charts this year so I had heard, and with a few inches of rain this past week I knew Phantom Falls would be flowing fairly well, and on Wednesday it seemed the stars were going to align for me with the forecast calling for partly cloudy skies on Saturday. But hiking out to Phantom Falls for a full hour in the dark is not something I really wanted to do by myself, what with all the mountain lions and killer cows up there, so I called up my bud, Mountain Goat Rob to see if he wanted to come out with me on Saturday morning, and of course he was game. However, the very next day (Thursday) the weather forecast changed, and now it was going to be all sunny on Saturday, no clouds. Ugh, I hate when it does that! Well, two out of three ain’t bad. But then I heard from someone else that the water flow was way down and the flowers were also done. Zero out of three? Nonetheless, we kept to the plan. I was sure that Phantom Falls would still be flowing decent. I wasn’t sure about the clouds or the flowers.

We started our hike in the dark through plenty of mud. It actually seemed like there was a lot of water flowing on Table Mountain after all. There were no clouds anywhere of course. Sigh. As for the flowers? Well, it was too dark to see anything! We also saw no lions, and no cows either. I guess the cows were all still sleeping, as we saw plenty of them on the hike back later that morning. We arrived at Phantom Falls just prior to sunrise, crossed the creek and made our way to the other side where I knew there would be wildflowers overlooking the waterfall. By this time it wasn’t so dark, and we could clearly see that there were certainly a lot of flowers everywhere on Table Mountain, but we both thought it was still a bit too early in the season. In a couple weeks, I think they will be spectacular everywhere. If we get some more rain, perhaps the waterfalls will still be flowing. I might even go back there again this year. Who knows.

It was also quite breezy, and the flowers were twiddling around like crazy (as Rob put it), making photography extremely difficult. The breeze paused just a bit prior to the sun coming up, and I think I got a pretty decent shot here. Next time we just need the pretty clouds.

After this we went down to the bottom of Phantom Falls, to which I had never been before. One more thing now off the bucket list. It is so utterly cool and amazing down there. There is a path but it is a very steep one. Mountain Goat Rob, of course, made it down easily without any ropes, but I brought my ropes with me to be on the safe side. It is just a tad, a shade, a smidgeon on the steep side for me. I am sure I could have done without the rope, but it is better to be safe than sorry is what I say. Now don’t worry, I do have pictures so I can prove to you that I actually went down there, and I have video as well, so I am sure you will see those things very soon (if you keep following me on this blog, of course).

I went right down to the very bottom of the waterfall. You could actually stand right under it if you wanted to. It would have been dumb to do that today, but I got right down there to feel the spray. That was awesome. You can, of course, also walk behind the waterfall under the cliff overhang. There is also a very interesting cave behind the falls. If you look on wikipedia, it mentions this cave, but indicates it is just this big area under the overhang. What? That is not a cave! But that is what I thought people were talking about when they mentioned the cave at Phantom Falls. Do you believe everything you read on wikipedia? In actual fact, however, there is a cave. A real cave, which is also a man-made cave, not a natural cave. I have no idea why it is there. It is not very big, but you can go in it and look down into a 20 ft drop. You would not want to fall in there, because you would not be getting out of it anytime soon. Anyhow, it is all very cool. If I can talk my son into going down there with me someday, I will definitely be back.

Here is an image of 69 ft. high Hollow Falls, North Table Mountain, Oroville from a few weeks ago. I think I might head back to Table Mountain one more time in the near future, now that everything is running again.

This latest storm brought us 7 inches of rain in the northern Sierra Nevada foothills (though only about 2 inches in the valley, such as here in Oroville). It is a tremendous blessing to receive this late season storm, and every little bit of rain is helping. However, I strongly disagree with what the News is saying about our prospects for the summer. I said right at the beginning that we needed at least four major storms just to get us through the summer. We have had three now. (plus 2 or 3 small ones). Folsom Lake is still only at about 45 percent capacity (the big northern reservoirs are not doing any better). There is still very little snow pack (though this last storm did increase that quite a bit). When the snow starts melting (soon), it is not going to increase the reservoir levels enough. We still need to be praying for at least one more big one. It is not spring yet folks (I hope). I will have more on the final snow pack tally on my next post.

I have heard that it does seem like spring on Table Mountain right now. The wildflowers are going off the charts this year at Table Mountain and elsewhere. Perhaps I will have a pretty flower picture for you on my next post. Ha ha.

Please watch latest Waterfall Madman video – new waterfall found in Tadpole Canyon: