Leon Turnbull Photography

I’ve been wondering for a few years now about the Silver Fork American River. Specifically, wondering if there are any waterfalls on it. I had not heard of any. But surely, I thought, there *must* be a waterfall on this river. Not a big one, I knew, but there must be a small one, a decent one, somewhere on this river.

I studied the topo maps. Studied them some more. I came up with a possible location. It even looked like there was a trail leading right to it. Sweet.

Well fast forward to a Friday evening in late July. I was in a certain mood. An exploring mood. But not for any difficult exploring. I wanted to get out of the house, get up in the mountains, away from the heat of the city. But I didn’t want a difficult hike, just an easy one, but not too easy. Well, where could I possibly go for that? Then a light bulb clicked. How about the Silver Fork? Seemed like a great idea. That river would be still flowing decent. It is not too far from my house, and the hike should not be too difficult. Perfect. And off I went.

I drove up the Silver Fork Road at Kyburz. I found that it was paved the whole way. That was sure nice. I didn’t want to have to wash my vehicle again so soon. I arrived at the trailhead, and I was surprised to find there was a campsite here. I didn’t know there was one here, and I didn’t know where the trailhead was, so I wandered through the campsite in search of the trail. Eventually I found it, and it would have been easier to find if I went the correct way, but oh well.

Once on the trail, things were easy. The trail leads up to where Caples Creek flows into the Silver Fork, then crosses Caples Creek on a bridge, and leads back to the Silver Fork. Both Caples Creek and the Silver Fork had pretty good flow. I arrived at the spot where I thought there would be a waterfall, and yay, lo and behold, there was one.

But I was quite early, the sun was still shining down into the canyon, and I felt like doing more hiking. So I continued on up the trail for another couple miles. The trail was mostly flat the entire distance, so it was a good hike and not too difficult. Just what the doctor ordered. I realized that I could have hiked all the way to Silver Lake. It would not have been all that far to the lake, but it was a bit far for me on this day, so I turned around well before getting to the lake. On the way back, I heard a totally obscene and outrageous noise coming up the trail interrupting my beautiful, pleasant hike. It was someone on a motorcycle coming towards me. I got out of the way, but this really irritated me because motor vehicles are not allowed on this trail. There are plenty of places where people can ride their motorcycles and not chew up nice hiking trails. Argh.

Anyway, I arrived back at the waterfall. As you can see from this photo, it does not look like much of a waterfall. I measured it to be 23 feet high. The problem with this waterfall is that it needs a lot of water flowing in the river to make it look good.  There are so many boulders in the river, when the flow is lower in the summer, it just doesn’t look so good. But in the spring, when the flow is high, I think this waterfall would be rockin. I definitely plan to be back here next spring. Though I won’t be able to stand in the middle of the river to take photos in the spring, so that might make things more interesting.

Surprises are nice.

After shooting Kings Creek Falls, I hiked back up to my vehicle. Of course, by the time I got back to it, the sun was fully out. I wanted to do one more hike before I met up for lunch with my family down at Lake Helen. My choice was the West Fork Hat Creek to Paradise Meadows, a hike that I had not ever done before, but I knew that there were a couple small waterfalls along this creek. I had no bones about what to expect, namely that the falls would be in complete sun and high contrast by the time I arrived, but that was fine with me.

There was construction going on the road beside the trailhead, so I had to park up the road a bit. After getting away from the noise, the hike became a very pleasant one, following the creek up to Paradise Meadows. The mosquitoes I met at Kings Creek did not follow me up to this location, but the sun was out now, so that was not a surprise. I came upon the first cascade and was treated to a very pleasant surprise: it was still in shade! This was about 3 hours after sunrise, so it was definitely a shocker, but I was extremely happy about this. Nonetheless, the sun was trying to poke its way through the tree cover, so I didn’t have very much time. I scrambled down to the creek, crossed it on unsturdy rocks, set up my camera quickly and took my photos. It was a very pretty 27 ft. high cascade in such a gorgeous little location.

I then crossed back and continued up the trail. That is when I realized Surprise # 2 and Surprise # 3. I came upon the next waterfall along this beautiful little creek. It should not have been there. What I mean is that I was only expecting to find two waterfalls on this creek, but there are actually four beautiful cascades all in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 feet high. All the guidebooks I have read indicated that there are only two cascades, not four. That is because the trail only goes beside cascades #2 and #4. To get to cascades #1 and #3, you need to go a bit off the main trail, and I suppose these authors did not even bother with that (though really, I don’t know why – they are not hard to get to). I personally thought cascades #1 and #3 were the two prettiest ones on the creek (the one pictured here is #1). As a bonus, the first 3 cascades were still in shade (mostly) when I got to them. I was pleased as punch on this hike.

As soon as the sun starting hitting Kings Creek Cascades, I packed up my gear and booted my behind down to Kings Creek Falls. I knew I had about 30 minutes and not much more before the sun started to hit this lower falls as well.

I took this first shot from the overlook. It is the typical, standard, un-unique, most highly photographed spot for this waterfall. But as it turned out, this was the best shot of the day that I took of this falls. I did go down to the base, and I did get on my water shoes and stand in the middle of the extremely freezing cold stream to take a shot of the falls, but I wasn’t really too pleased with how that shot turned out. There was quite a bit of mist down there (even though the falls were not roaring) and that always makes it tough to shoot. Anyway, this shot is pretty nice I think.

I arrived at the trailhead for Kings Creek in the dark. I knew that the sun would be hitting Kings Creek Cascades right at sunrise, and then hitting Kings Creek Falls very shortly after. If you want to photograph these falls, you must be down there at or before sunrise. Because of this, I had not previously gotten any really good shots of the Cascades, and I wanted to be sure that this time was different.

There were mosquitoes out and about along the Kings Creek trail. Bummer. I sprayed myself with bug juice to keep them away. It worked. There was also still some snow along the trail in various places. Kings Creek had a good flow to it, but I was actually expecting it to be rushing a lot harder. I was thinking that it would not be crossable (which I needed to do – down at the falls), but in fact it would be very easy to cross. I approached the junction which leads down to the Cascades and found that it was closed! I have no idea why, it is not like this trail was too dangerous to follow or anything like that. This closure was really bad of course because this is where I wanted to go. And of course, I obeyed the closure and went around on the horse trail down to the falls. Ahem.

I must say that I am very pleased with this shot. Initially, I had thought that I arrived about ten minutes too late to capture the best color in the sky. That is probably true, however, when I got home, I was very happy with how this shot turned out. In fact, I think it is my personal favorite of this year so far. It was a very beautiful morning in Lassen Volcanic NP.

Everyone knows that there are three and only three waterfalls in Lassen Volcanic National Park: Mill Creek Falls, Kings Creek Falls, and Kings Creek Cascades. It is a very beautiful park and has plenty to see, but there are only three waterfalls there. Yeah right. Everyone can keep thinking that.

If you are reading this, you should know by now that I cannot accept such a paltry number for such a beautiful park.If there is steep terrain and plenty of creeks, then there must be waterfalls. And Leon Turnbull will find them.

I did have a bit of help with this one (thanks Michael J.). But I am definitely a bit shocked that Grassy Swale Falls has never been documented or posted before.  Okay, it is not as big or spectacular as Mill Creek or Kings Creek, but still it is quite a lovely cascade, 43 ft. high. And it was high on my list to visit this summer when I was up north.

It is quite an easy hike to get to this waterfall. I was thinking it would be much more difficult than it was. The maintained trail begins at Summit Lake, leads down to a couple of crossings of Kings Creek (I didn’t even need to get my feet wet there), and then voila, there it is. Getting down to the bottom of it was a bit tricky and steep, but nothing too bad. I arrived at the falls early, and there was still a lot of sun shining on the falls. So I found a spot to sit and I waited for the light to get better. It was actually very pleasant, and surprisingly, no mosquitoes (there “were” mosquitoes at Kings Creek so I was happy about that). I was happy sitting here, enjoying the waterfall, then after taking my shots, hiked back up to Summit Lake, arriving well before sunset. A good day at Lassen and a new waterfall found. And in case you are wondering, there are more waterfalls to be found in Lassen than just this one as well. But that is another post.