Leon Turnbull Photography

The town of Quintette has been keeping a secret from me. How naughty of them, trying to hide this waterfall from me. Sooner or later though, I will find it. And this past weekend, I did just that. Though it wasn’t easy.

I had actually heard about a waterfall here a couple years ago. But the person who told me did not know exactly where it was. I went there to search for it, but did not find it. Now I returned again, a couple years later, and after studying the topo maps, I had a good idea where the waterfall might be.

Access to the waterfall is a bit questionable, though the falls itself is on public land. Nonetheless, I headed down the old inactive logging road. It was late in the day, but I figured I had lots of time to get there and back. It was very warm, and the mosquitoes were already out. Not a good sign. In fact, I was pretty sure the creek would be completely dry. All the snow in Quintette had already melted. I probably should have been here a month earlier. Why even try now? Yet, I persevered onwards. I arrived down at the creek after a couple miles hiking, and lo and behold, the creek was still flowing decently well. Not overly well, but not too shabby. There was no waterfall there at the creek. But I knew in my head that the waterfall would be upstream. And that meant I would have to do a bit of bushwhacking. So up the creek and into the woods I went. There was a bit of a path up the creekside, so I knew that people had been up there before. Not too many though, and the trail had a lot of brush and branches to negotiate. I got a glimpse of the waterfall through the trees ahead, so I continued on. As I got closer, the going got a lot more difficult. The terrain was crumbly, and very steep. It was not easy. A fall would have hurt to say the least. Finally, I reached the bottom of the waterfall, and it was a nice one, 83 ft. high. With all the trees and branches around the area, it is not a particularly photogenic waterfall, but it was worth the trek to see it. By now it was getting quite late, so I took my photos quickly and headed back up the hill. The extra bit of scrambling up the creek bed made me later than I wanted to be, and I arrived back at my vehicle after sunset, just as it was getting dark.

This is called Little Hawaii Falls, near Manton in northern California. As far as waterfalls go, it is certainly not an exciting one or very interesting. But the greenery around the area is lush and gorgeous, and it definitely reminds one of the lushness of Hawaii.

If the waterfall was flowing at its best, it would certainly be a lot nicer, but it wasn’t and I was definitely expecting it to be flowing a lot better than it was.

Nonetheless, I did not make the trip all the way out to Manton just to see this waterfall. I was looking for some new waterfalls. Unfortunately, I struck out. All the creeks in the area were dry or just trickling. I was very surprised at this, and quite disappointed. It was a very rainy day and I ended up driving on a crazy 4×4 road out in the middle of nowhere. I drove over one unnamed creek flowing over the road (which made me think the other creeks would be flowing very well). That was a bit unnerving driving over because the creek was probably about a foot deep. As I continued, the road got worse and narrower and I thought I was going to get stuck, not able to go forward or backward. I managed to get to a point where I could turn the vehicle around, took a breath, and walked the rest of the way to the dry creek in the rain. Great.

We spent Mother’s Day weekend up in northern CA visiting the in-laws. I had hopes of doing a big hike on Monday to some new waterfalls, however the weather put a big damper on that idea. I got out in the rain, but didn’t do anything significant or get to any new stuff. It would not have been very pleasant to do a 12 mile hike in the pouring rain.

This shot was taken before the rain started, on Saturday evening. This is Lower Battle Creek Falls near Mineral. The creek was raging. When I was here last time, we were able to get right down in the creek at the base of the falls. I even brought my water shoes along so I could do a similar type of thing. What was I thinking. The creek was flowing far too deep and fast to do any such nonsense this time. This shot was taken from up on a rock on the steep hillside.

Yesterday my friend Rob and I took a trip out to Table Mountain in Oroville to check out some different waterfalls. I was “pretty sure” that the waterfalls there would still be flowing. Wrong. We went to four different falls and three were dry. Only one was flowing, but we arrived there too late. The sun was already shining directly in our faces in front of the waterfall. It was very difficult to photograph the waterfall because of this, and I was not very happy with how the photo turned out (however, I did post the picture below anyway).

The waterfall is Beatson Falls, one of a couple magnificent falls on Table Mountain (along with Phantom Falls). Beatson Falls, however, does not get very many visitors. It is a bit off the beaten path, I suppose, and not as many people venture over that way. It is not difficult to get to, however. But it is difficult to photograph.

The terrain on Table Mountain is just incredible. Here you are, walking along a very flat open grassy area, watching that you don’t step on any rattlesnakes, then all of a sudden you come to the edge of a monster canyon with massive death defying drop-offs. Streams flow through these canyons, and in the winter months they form huge waterfalls. All the canyons on Table Mountain seem to look alike, and all the waterfalls seem to look alike as well. It is an extraordinary landscape. At Beatson Falls, there are also very interesting pinnacle formations as well. I just wish the streams would have more flow to them. You have to get here immediately after a lot of rain or they will go back to being their dry normal selves again.

At Beatson Falls, it is very difficult to get a good view of the waterfall due to these death defying drop-offs. We chose the south side of the stream. We had very little time since the sun was already above the horizon. We found a viewpoint of the falls, but we had to get very near the edge of the canyon to see it. It was very un-nerving to be so close to the edge. Do not look down, and stop shaking your knees or you will wobble right off the edge! Unfortunately, the sun was right in our faces here. Rob decided to use his mountain goat capabilities and try photographing from the other side. I should have done this as well as he got a much better photograph, but it looked even more dicier on the other side, so I just chose to go down to the top of the falls and take some shots from there. The photo above is a small 5 foot cascade at the top of Beatson Falls.

Here’s a shot of the main waterfall. I will definitely be back here when the light is better.

Here is a shot from a couple weeks ago. I am not sure why I did not post it yet. I kinda forgot about it.

I was trying to get to a certain waterfall in the Kyburz area but I failed miserably, thanks to a lot of heavy brush, not to mention a run-in with some loud barking dogs that were threatening to bite my leg off. So I just settled in on this fast flowing creek, and trying for a very long exposure. Maybe that’s why I forgot about it, I was trying to block the day and failed waterfall quest from my mind. Ha ha.