Leon Turnbull Photography

New Year’s Day … Get up and get at ’em … That’s what I say … No sleeping in for this party maniac. Ha ha.

Yeah folks, I was in bed at 9PM on New Year’s Eve. I don’t care squat about staying up for the end of year. It’s just another day to me. But if I have a day off work, I want to get out and go hiking. That’s how I roll, man.

With the lack of rain and how utterly and inhumanely dry it has been, you may wonder why I would even bother. Well heck, it is my favorite time of year to get out hiking. I am not going to let the STUPID weather keep me from doing what I love to do. Besides, waterfalls are still flowing. You just need to pick the right spots to go to. If I had gone to, say, Traverse Creek or Dutch Creek, I would be sorely disappointed. But Silver Falls on Otter Creek is a much larger drainage, and it would still have some decent flow. So that is just where I went. And by golly of gollies, it was actually flowing, just like I said.

I was almost in Placerville before I realized I had forgotten my wallet and phone back at the house. Argh, my wife would be worried. I would not be able to send her any messages. Too late to turn back now. Let’s just hope I don’t put the car in the ditch out in the middle of nowhere.

The road out to the trailhead is rough rough rough. And muddy muddy muddy. With the no rain situation, you would think there would be no mud. Think again. When I was here last year, I had to stop because of a huge mud hole. The same mud hole was there today. I tested it, however, with my hiking pole, and determined I could continue driving through it this time. When I was here back in 2009, I don’t remember any mud holes on this road. The road seems to have gotten much worse over the years. Or else my memory much worse. You decide.

And now a new problem presented itself: the road was gated just before getting down to the trailhead with a large NO TRESPASSING sign. What the hey? This is a public road and a public historic trail. How can anyone put up a big gate preventing access to this public trail? It is totally illegal to do this. Not only this, it added a mile to my hike because I had to park further back. Argh! When I got back home, I checked my maps. To the best of my knowledge, it seems that the forest road briefly crosses private land just before it gets to the trailhead, and that is where the gate is, but the trail seems to be all on public land. Unbelievable. Totally illegal gate.

That gate was annoying but it sure is not going to stop me. Off I went down to the waterfall. The trail, though it is old, public, and historic, does not get very much traffic. It does have brush and poison oak overgrowing onto the trail, and a few fallen trees to negotiate. A few ticks as well. And mountain lions.

When I got down to the creek and started working my way up to the waterfall, I apparently found the local lions’ dinner spot. Bones scattered all over the place (deer bones, I think). And that means … it was either mountain lion or Sasquatch that was here enjoying the waterfall view while munching on a tasty snack or two. No sign of Mr. Cougar was to be had, and that was surely a good thing. I continued to the waterfall.

As you can see from the photo, Silver Falls was not raging by any means, but nor was it dry as many creeks are these days. In fact,  the flow was only slightly lower than when I was here last time, which was in January 2009. Pretty darn nice waterfall. Interesting to note also: that grate (or whatever it is) at the base of the fall was not here last time. Wonder how it got there. Weird.

This is easy to reach 69 ft. Potem Falls. I came here first thing in the morning before heading to Bear Canyon Falls (previous post). With the low flow it was easy to cross the stream at the bottom and get to the other side for a somewhat different sort of angle than the usual stuff from here. It is still quite a pretty waterfall and was flowing a bit better than I expected it to be. Of course it is an incredible waterfall when going at full tilt.

It seems that the dry weather will be continuing into January and the foreseeable future. There is nothing in the long range forecast. This is so disappointing and frustrating. This is the third straight year now, and this one is far worse than the previous two thus far. Folsom Lake is only at 19 percent capacity, and we already have mandatory water restrictions. If we do not get rain, we are headed for major drought next summer in California. But there is still time for a comeback. Pray pray pray. Please send us rain, Lord!

Well I didn’t have to spend Christmas alone at home like I did Thanksgiving, when I was laid out on my back all weekend. I thought it might happen, as my back was still not healed and driving up north had me concerned. It was going to be a painful trip. How on earth could I even think about hiking? But I WAS thinking about hiking. Heck, even if it was just an easy little one, I was emphatic that I would go hiking this weekend.

I went to Potem Falls first. That was certainly easy enough. Potem Falls was flowing ok, definitely not great, and it was easy enough to cross the stream, but nonetheless it was flowing better than I expected it to be. I will share that photo soon enough.

There is another waterfall near Potem that I have had my eye on for quite awhile. Bear Canyon Falls. Apparently it is only accessible by boat from Lake Shasta. But I was determined to get to it by land. And so I did. It was not exactly what I would call a hard hike … if I had a working back. However, it was harder than I wanted to do, all things considered, and it put my back to the strain. But I came out of it none the worse for wear and that was all I wanted. I did not want to make my back any worse than it was to begin with.

Like I said, it was not a particularly hard hike. However, there is no trail, there is poison oak, there are ticks, and at the end a very steep descent down to the creek. Well that is only partly true. There was only one tick. But that is because it was so darn cold out. And there was a trail. Actually there were two trails down Bear Canyon. They were human trails too, but they were very very old trails, and very very overgrown. They seemed to follow the canyon all the way down to the lake. I was able to follow them for the most part, but it was a challenge. How long ago did these trails see any usage? Years and years and decades and decades no doubt.

I made it down to a cliffy section and I could see where the waterfall was. Now how to get down this cliff to the creek? I found a path and carefully made my descent. It was not too hard, but there was quite a bit of oak to navigate through. Once down at the creek, I had to cross it to get any sort of view of the waterfall. I guess you could say the waterfall was BEARLY flowing. Haha, get it? Actually it was flowing not too bad though it would be very interesting to see it in high water. Nonetheless it is a highly intriguing waterfall, and highly challenging to view or photograph it. It drops through and under some huge rocks hanging over the creek in two segments, and it seems almost as if the waterfall falls underground. It is very dark under those rocks, and you cannot get up close to it or get a complete view of the falls. This is why I chose such a tight and zoomed in composition for my photograph. I think this best shows some of the intriguing-ness that I am talking about. It was a very nice hike to a very interesting little waterfall.

There was a bit more snow and ice at the Upper Iowa Canyon Falls. It was a magical setting. Quite easy to reach the upper falls because the water was so low but the shade and snow made the exposure difficult to handle. But I like the final result.

I did not spend too much time here because I had to get to the church. My kids were practicing for the Christmas play (the actual play was on Sunday). My son Jadon had one of the lead parts and he did a fantastic job. I was very proud of him. Nekoda did great with her part as well.

Please check out my latest Waterfall Madman Video (Episode 2 – Curtain Falls). Try to watch in HD 1080p if possible:

http://youtu.be/QoEdWdwupDA

25 degrees. That was the temperature. Brrr. My primary thought was how I was going to wade up the creek to the waterfall. My toes would freeze off in three seconds at that temperature. Literally.

I had another surprise though. Snow! I was certainly not expecting to find so much snow still left from last weekend’s storm. Even down at river level there was still quite a bit of snow left. I was very pleased about that. I love going to snowy and icy waterfalls. But would I make it?

It would have even been better if I’d come here last weekend with all the fresh snow. It would have been awesome. Nonetheless it was fantastic today with the ice around the waterfall. I needn’t have worried about wading up the creek either. With the low water flow, I could easily walk up the creek bed, in fact the creek bed was completely dry. It seems the water goes underground just below the waterfall, which was weird. The prickly brush was easy to navigate as well with the snow covering it. The only real difficulty was climbing up over the rocks right in front of the waterfall, which was slightly tricky but not overly terrible. It was so gorgeous at the base of the waterfall. Definitely a worthwhile effort.

My back held up very well as well, this being the first hike I’ve done in a couple weeks. It was so great to get out in God’s creation again.

Please check out my latest Waterfall Madman Video (Episode 2 – Curtain Falls). Try to watch in HD 1080p if possible:

http://youtu.be/QoEdWdwupDA