Leon Turnbull Photography

Last week after work I went to visit Stevens Creek Falls in Colfax. Technically, the creek is actually not named Stevens Creek and the trail is called Stevens Trail, not Stevens Creek Trail. The creek is really called Robbers Ravine. But everyone calls this Stevens Creek Falls. Go figure. Anyway, the creek is flowing fairly well right now, and it is a good time to visit the waterfall. That is, if you love poison oak and ticks!

It is a very easy trail to the waterfall, but poison oak abounds along the trail. It can be avoided if you are keeping your eyes open. However, once you get to the waterfall, if you want to get a decent view, you need to scramble off trail, and that means pushing through a swath of poison oak. I was trying like crazy to avoid the stuff, but it was pretty much impossible. Nonetheless, I only ended up with one very small bit of itch on my stomach afterwards, so I guess I did pretty well. But not so well on the ticks. I picked up four of them while scrambling up to the falls, and one of them bit me pretty good. Dang! Ticks are far worse than poison oak and some of them carry awful stuff along with them. But I think I got it out before it did too much damage and I just ended up with a big red spot that itched for a couple days. That is the first tick bite I have had in quite a few years, and I was not happy about it.

Anyway, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. I actually arrived at the falls too early. The sun was still shining brightly on the waterfall. It is in an open area and facing south, so in direct line of the evening sun. Rather than just sit and wait for an hour, I decided to continue hiking on down the trail. I had never been past the falls before, but I knew the trail went all the way down to the river. I expected it to start descending rather quickly after the falls. But no. It stayed very high, following a contour along the river, high above it. The views were astounding, and wildflowers abundant along the trail (along with poison oak of course). Hundreds of feet below me, I saw some kayakers and rafters going down the river, and I watched them (and heard them) as they went over a rapid. The river was loud, even so far below. I continued hiking for about 30 minutes, still with no sign that the trail was going to descend down to the river, then I decided to turn around and go back to the falls.

There was still sun shining on the falls when I got back to it, so I first decided to work on the lower falls. The lower section is a bugger to get down to, however. Very steep and dangerous drop-offs. I have been down there before, and wasn’t in the mood this day. So I decided to get a picture from the top of the lower falls looking down instead. That is when I almost lost my expensive polarizer filter over the falls. I dropped it, and it started rolling down to the creek and over the falls. If it had done that, it would have been gone. But I kicked out my foot to block it just in time, and it ended up in the creek but did not go over the falls. Whew, that was a close one!

After shooting the lower section, I worked my way up through the oak and ticks to the upper section of the falls. It is a very difficult waterfall to shoot, and it is not very photogenic. The waterfall is 337 ft. high, but you cannot see much of it from any point, plus there are many obstructions of bushes and trees as well. This section here is the middle section of the falls, and to get this angle, I had to scramble up on top of a big rock. After doing so, I wondered how I would possibly get down (but I guess it wasn’t too difficult actually), and I had to spend about 5 minutes on top of the rock trying to get my tripod positioned in a secure enough spot. By the time I was ready, the sun was just starting to leave but was still casting a warm glow on the top section of the falls.

Here’s another of the many waterfalls on Table Mountain, from my outing a couple weeks ago there. This one is called Ravine Falls.

I suspect now that the waterfalls on Table Mountain have pretty much dried up. However, with the April storm we had a couple days ago, they might have new life for a couple days. Unfortunately, I just cannot take a day off work and go up there, and by the time the weekend comes, they’ll be mostly dried up again.

I know everyone around here is longing for spring and warm weather. But not me. I’m quite happy about this latest “winter” storm. It means more flow for the waterfalls. I’m already trying to figure out where I want to go next weekend. Decisions decisions. Stay tuned for more …

One day after work this past week, I headed up to my local Traverse Creek Falls. Since my family was out of town, it was a good time to head out into the hills, but I didn’t want to go very far, so I figured Traverse Creek was the ticket.

I was expecting and hoping that Traverse Creek Falls would be in “double” mode (and lo and behold, it was!). I had not yet any good pictures of it in double mode, and double mode is the prettiest of its many forms. When I arrived at the trailhead, though, I could see that the tributary creeks (which flow into Traverse Creek) looked rather full, so I kinda thought that the waterfall might still be in “torrent” mode, which would have been surprising considering that we have not had much rain recently. Once I got down to Traverse Creek, however, I could see that the flow was definitely not torrent mode, and it was actually flowing quite nicely as a beautiful double falls.

I had brought my water shoes along with me, because I knew I wanted to cross the creek this time, and take pics from the other side of the creek. The water was rather cold as I waded across it, but I was actually not standing quite in the creek to take this shot, though my tripod was (and it didn’t like it – ha ha).

Afterwards, I packed up my stuff and headed back up the hill. This is one of the places that I usually try to remember to bring a garbage bag and pick up any trash on the way out. In the past, this place has been a total trash heap. I picked up a bit of trash, more than I would like to see here, but I have definitely seen it worse. This is just one thing that I completely fail to understand. How can people be so completely inconsiderate, disrespectful, and stupid? Are they really so incapable, that they cannot take out the trash that they bring in? Why ruin such a nice area for everyone else (and for yourself, when you come back in the future)? Anyway, end rant. Have a nice day.

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Last week I took the family on a drive in a hunt for wildflowers. It has been warm and sunny here in California, the wildflowers are a popping now. We found this nice little place near Ione, a beautiful field display of poppies and white popcorn flowers. The kids had fun playing amongst the flowers, and my wife had fun taking pics with her iPhone. It was a lovely evening.

I love finding new waterfalls. Have I said that before?

Well, here is a new one that I found today. I had heard about a waterfall on Panther Creek near Tiger Creek Reservoir, off Hwy 88. I had no idea where it was exactly, or what it was like, or if it could be accessed. So off I went in search of the truth.

As is my custom, I get up bright and early, get a quick breakfast, make some coffee, and set off driving in the dark. About 30 or 60 minutes into the drive, using the restroom becomes somewhat of a necessity. Thus, I stopped at the Shell gas station in Sutter Creek to use the facilities. A sign on the restroom door, however, said “Restroom is for employees only”. Crap! Is there no public restroom here, I thought? I turned around to go ask the clerk, and that is when I noticed a hunter dude standing by the counter. He gave me a nod and a wink, and pointed back at the restroom, indicating it was perfectly fine for me to use the restroom. He sure didn’t look like an employee, but he did look like he was in the know, and that gave me assurance it was okay, so I turned around and went back inside. After I came out, I went to go buy a drink, and I noticed two boys come in the store to use the facilities as well. The hunter dude was still standing there, and did the same thing for them, giving them a nod and telling them it was okay to use the restroom. I wondered if he just stood there all day doing this. Anyway, I went up to the counter to pay for my drink. The clerk was an East Indian man, very friendly, and after giving me my change he told me, “You have a wonderful day, and God bless you.” Wow, I just thought that was so incredibly nice, and it totally made my morning.

Anyway, onto the waterfall. I drove up to Tiger Creek Reservoir, and continued up Tiger Creek Road, to the place where I anticipated the waterfall to be, after my study of the Topo maps. For once, it was in the exact spot I anticipated, and it was even visible from the road. Getting down to it, however, was quite another matter entirely.

A very steep drop-off from the road made it impossible to get down to it. I tried scrambling down a gulley, hoping I would get a view of it from lower down. It was treacherous, the slope was crumbly, and I made my way down incredibly slowly and carefully. Getting to the bottom was out of the question as I came upon the top of a cliff. I made my way over to a possible overlook, but I found it would be much too dangerous to get right up to the overlook. I also saw that even if I could get there, I would not get any decent view of the falls. Dang! I came all this way and cannot even get to see this waterfall. I took a quick snap of the obscured waterfall view, and made my way back up the steep slope to the road.

Once back at the top, I went back down the road a short distance and that is when I saw another possible descent, much gentler than the first one. I made my way down and found that I could pretty much get all the way to the bottom. I came to this fabulous unobstructed view of the waterfall. I measured it to be 78 ft. high. A stunning waterfall in a remote location. I think it would have been possible to get even closer, and possibly all the way down to the creek, but I decided that I would save that for another day, as there were more spots I wanted to try to get to, and the sun was already close to shining down into the canyon. So back up I went again, and back to my car.

My second quest for the day was to try to find a waterfall on nearby Tiger Creek. But this time I struck out. I really had no clue where this one would be. I was hoping to see it from the road, or possibly try hiking up the creek from the powerhouse. However, access at the powerhouse was all closed off, so that was out of the question. So instead, I opted for a different sort of hike. Following a trail from the powerhouse, I climbed up to the Tiger Creek Forebay, which is a little reservoir that PG&E has created. Why would I do this? I just do not know. In fact, it was kinda crazy cuz it was an incredibly steep hike up there, and took me a full hour to climb the mountain. At the top, there were no views at all of anything (except the uninteresting little reservoir). It also required some very agile footwork to avoid the hundreds of ticks I saw along the trail, just hanging off the grasses, waiting to attack an unsuspecting traveler. I think I could be eligible for some sort of dance trophy, because I managed to avoid getting any ticks on my body whatsoever.