With my new job I have to submit vacation requests at least one month in advance. This is a problem for me sometimes. I usually like to plan my backpacking trips within a week or two of the date. I do not know what the weather will be like a month or more in advance. For October trips, there could be rain. There could be snow. There could be fires. Just book it and hope for the best, I guess. One thing that I certainly did NOT expect to be an issue in October: HEAT! It was over 100 degrees in the valley in the first days of October and it still has not let up. This has literally been the summer of hell in California. At least it would not be 100 degrees in the mountains but it was going to be much hotter than I would like and no doubt the bugs would be an issue as well.
Where was my planned trip going to be? The infamous Rae Lakes loop in Kings Canyon National Park. 5 days. 45 miles. 8000 ft. of elevation gain. Majestic mountains. Spectacular lakes. Magnificent scenery. Multitudes of waterfalls. Was this another bucket list hike for me? I suppose it was. It was not at the top of my list but it has been something I’ve wanted to do for a long time now.
I got zero sleep the night before the trip. Maybe a half hour at most. I was up at 2AM. Why so early? A couple reasons but mainly because I wanted to try to get to the first waterfall, Mist Falls, in good lighting conditions. I already have decent photos of this waterfall so I didn’t really need to do this but it’s always nice to re-visit waterfalls and get better photos. It is a very long and tiring drive to the trailhead. I forgot just how long and slow the drive is to Cedar Grove in Kings Canyon NP. It is excruciating. I don’t really want to ever do that drive again but who knows.
I arrived on time at the trailhead (7:30AM) and started the hike. It is 4 miles to Mist Falls. Once you start the last bit up to the waterfall the gnats came out in force. All because of that darn heat this summer. They should be gone by October. How did they compare to Tehipite? Tehipite is the hellish standard in gnat comparison so if Tehipite was a 10 in nastiness then I would say Rae Lakes was an 8. They were bad but thankfully I would not have them for the entire hike. And I had my head net of course.
After Mist Falls I continued on to Upper Paradise Valley. The hike is very difficult due to all the rock steps they built into the trail. Why did they have to do this? Pretty much the entire Rae Lakes loop is horribly built with all these rock steps. It is mostly not necessary and it makes the hike at least five times more difficult. Every single one you have to lift your leg up higher than you should and some of the steps were huge. It was so incredibly tiring. Argh.
I camped the first night at 7000 ft. elevation after hiking 9.0 miles and 1900 ft. elevation gain thus far. The gnats were still out at this elevation but praise the Lord there was a breeze in the afternoon and the bugs left me alone. Until the evening when the breeze stopped but I was going to bed early anyway.
As part of my continuing quest to re-visit waterfalls I have already been to and taking Journey along for the ride, next up on my list: Sly Park Falls. I knew this waterfall was still flowing decent because of a recent photo I had seen. At least I thought it was still flowing. It is a man-made waterfall so they could turn off the tap anytime, even if it was flowing a week ago. Cross fingers and hope for the best, right?
I have been extremely happy with Journey on recent walks. Make no mistake about it: Journey is 1000% a mama’s girl. She lives and breathes for her mama. She will do anything for her mama. That is not to say she does not love her daddy. She loves going to the park with me. Nonetheless, in the beginning she did not really trust me completely and I could not trust her either if I let her off-leash. Slowly, however, she has turned the corner with me. She trusts me now fully. On recent hikes I have let her off leash more and more, and she will stay with me and she will listen to me. She has been absolutely awesome. This makes me very happy. I would hike with our previous dog Kaya off leash all the time and I want Journey to have the same freedom. We are getting there.
The hike to Sly Park Falls was a perfect one for her. It is all on trail, it is not difficult, and there was no one else around so early in the morning. We just saw one jogger on the entire hike. I had her off leash for about 80% of the hike and she was perfect. She stayed with me the entire time, except when she stopped for the occasional sniffing of the flowers and bushes (which Kaya always did as well), but she would always come back to me when I called her. I was so happy. And so was Journey.
Along the way we passed by a forestry workers site. There was a big machine that was running but I saw no people around. Did they just leave it running all night? I think perhaps they were getting ready to work for the day and there was a sign saying do no enter due to the forestry work going on. I suspected that we would not be able to return this same way. Fortunately I did have an alternate way back to the car otherwise it could have been an issue.
We arrived at the waterfall. It was still flowing very well. Thanks for not turning off the tap, people of the park. In order to get this particular viewpoint without all the tree branches in the way you need to cross the two streams. It was not hard but Journey did not particularly want to cross it, though she did it with no difficulty. We stayed at the waterfall for quite awhile. I took my photos and Journey waited for me patiently. Then she had a good snack before we headed back.
We took a different route. It was a lot steeper. In fact it was almost vertical. I had a very hard time finding purchase for my feet in the loose dirt as I climbed up the mountain. Journey had no such trouble. We got back to the car and drove home. Mama was still sleeping but Journey was happy to wake her up. Wake up mama, I’m home. Let’s play! Ha ha. It was a fantastic morning in Eldorado National Forest.
How many bucket list waterfalls have I been to this year? One, two, three, four. All of them in Yosemite National Park: Eleanor Creek Falls, Ribbon Falls, Kendrick Falls, and … doo doo doo doo … bottom of Illilouette Falls. Four is quite a lot for one year, right? Obviously I’ve been on many other hikes, but I am talking about bucket lists, once in a lifetime hikes, at the top of my list.
I think I have probably mentioned before that I hate the new system in Yosemite where you need to get a day permit reservation in advance. That may work for some people but not me. I cannot plan months in advance when I am going to Yosemite on a certain random day in the future. I usually plan my hikes last minute. I don’t know what the weather is going to be like months in advance, or when I will be able to go on a certain hike, or even what hike I want to do until a few days before. They do release additional permits one week ahead of time, however, on Saturday I am usually hiking so I cannot log on to the computer and try and get a permit in the 10 minutes they are available before they all sell out. This past week, however, I was not doing anything on Saturday so I was actually able to log on and snag a day permit for the following weekend. Goodness gracious me.
I have often wondered why they say you need a permit at 5AM. It is so early! I could go in to the park before 5AM without a permit but that would mean I would have to drive to Yosemite Friday night and find a place to camp or sleep in my car. I don’t really like doing that too much. After 5AM you need to have that darn permit. I arrived at the gate at 5:55 AM. Permit in hand. The kiosk booth was not open! There was no one there! I suspect now that they do not even open until 6AM at the earliest. So why do they say 5AM? Next time I would not even need a permit. Would it be worth taking that chance? Hmmm.
There were a lot of people in the Valley. The Curry Village parking lot was completely full. The trailhead parking lot was almost full. It was only 6:30 AM! Holy crikey.
I got my stuff and headed up the trail. I thought the Ribbon Falls hike was very tough (it was). This hike was about three times as difficult. It is about the same length and about the same elevation gain, just a little more. But there is no trail! (unlike Ribbon). It is all off trail. There is brush. There are creek crossings. There is walking right up the creek bed. There is scrambling over huge boulders. There are a couple technical class three maneuvers to get over the huge rocks. It was at the limit of my skill level. It took 2 1/2 hours up and the same going back down. But I made it. The bottom of Illilouette Falls! I would not say it was spectacular but I would certainly say it was incredibly beautiful. (it would be spectacular at high flow but it’s not possible to do this in the spring). Bonus: I saw zero people. Everyone else was hiking the Mist Trail. It was a fantastic morning in Yosemite National Park.
After church on Sunday, Nekoda, Journey and I went up to Lake Tahoe for the afternoon.
The plan was to hike up to Grass Lake, swim, and see a couple new waterfalls. Well, we sort of did that.
We arrived at the Glen Alpine trailhead about 3PM. Journey was happy to be on the trail again. However, the first part is very rocky and I don’t think she liked walking on all the sharp rocks. She did all right, though, and it gets better after you pass Upper Glen Alpine Falls.
Speaking of, Upper Glen Alpine Falls was looking quite a bit sad. I have been here many times, at all times of year, including August, and I have never seen the creek this low. I was expecting all the waterfalls in the area to still be flowing well. It was quite disappointing and surprising and it would alter our hiking plan.
We made it to Grass Lake. The weather was overcast so we decided to go to Grass Lake Falls first. It is not exactly easy getting down to it and the last section involves scrambling over boulders. I was surprised about this as well, I thought it would be very easy. The boulders were very large, it was quite tricky scrambling, and it was not something Journey could do. Thankfully, Nekoda was with me so she could watch the dog while I went the rest of the way to the waterfall. With the low flow in the creek I could scramble directly up the creek bed to get right in front of the waterfall (I will not be doing that in the spring). Grass Lake Falls is 25 ft. high. It was not horrible but it would certainly be better at higher flows if you could get to it.
We went back up to the lake. I decided to skip the second new waterfall I had planned as I was 99% sure it would be completely dry given the current state of affairs. It started raining. The weather forecast? Zero percent chance of rain today. Zero percent, huh. I am pretty sure zero means zero. Nada. Not going to rain whatsoever. I had considered taking a quick dip in the lake but I was not going to do that in the rain. I am glad Nekoda decided to go in, however. Nothing was going to stop her.
The rain stopped, the sun came out a bit, Journey was refreshed with food and water, and we hiked back to the trailhead. We stopped at Upper Glen Alpine Falls for a quick photo and arrived back to the car just after sunset. It was a lovely afternoon in Desolation Wilderness.
I slept fairly well and was up at sunrise. The creek was much clearer in the morning as I suspected it would be so I scrambled down the steep and unstable slope to obtain water for drinking and for coffee. It was actually still quite a bit dirty (much more so than 6 years ago) but once it passed through my filter it was clean as a whistle.
While I was down there I walked up the creek bed to the upper falls to take a photo of it from the base. This was a new photo for me as I did not do this last time. Being down in this canyon is frankly a bit frightening. The cliffs are very unstable. I heard more than one rock fall during the night. Indeed as I was taking photos of the waterfall a large rock fell down the cliffs directly beside me. Thankfully it was on the other side of the creek and was not a danger (although it would have been if it was much bigger). Nonetheless it freaked me out and I jumped four feet in the air. I did not realize it until afterwards but there was a massive boulder sitting very precariously on the cliffs directly above where I was photographing. If that had fallen while I was down there? Well … you get the picture … Pancakes.
I climbed back up with water in tow and made some coffee for my breakfast and pancakes, enjoying the morning sun with view of the mountain and waterfalls. The hike back out was uneventful. My pack was much lighter since I was only carrying two liters of water and less food as well. I made it back to the car by 10:30am. The Kia Soul was still there. I’m just glad it wasn’t stuck somewhere along the road and blocking my path. I was home by 4pm. It was a marvelous two days in the Mt. Shasta Wilderness.
