Leon Turnbull Photography

There are some nice little lakes up in the Mt. Shasta City area which I had not known about before. They provide some wonderful views of the great Mt. Shasta mountain. But apparently, we were not the only ones to think so. There were quite a few backpackers camping up at this lake, called Heart Lake. As we (unintentionally) trampled through their makeshift campsite in a hurry to find a spot to photograph the sunrise, I am sure we probably woke some of them up. Especially my dog, Kaya, who has to go sniff everything in sight, including some people sleeping under the stars in a sleeping bag only without a tent. I am quite sure that I would not want to do that up here in bear country. Would you want a bear coming up to your sleeping bag in the middle of the night, sniffing you out for a late night snack? I don’t think so. I wonder if any of these people thought they were being sniffed out by a bear when my dog trotted on up to them. heh heh. Well, they should be up to see the sunrise anyway. It was a gorgeous one, thanks to all the smoke and haze in the valley.

Unless you have been living under a rock lately or in some far-off corner of the planet, I am sure you have heard about all the forest fires burning in California. There are currently over 1000 active fires across the state, most of them caused by lightning coupled with the unusually dry spring we have had. All these fires have caused a tremendous amount of smoke to just sit over the Sacramento Valley, which stretches hundreds of miles from south of Sacramento up past Redding in the north end of the state. I live in the Sacramento area, and I thought it was very bad here (and it was), but as I drove up north this past weekend, I found it much worse up there. Redding in particular was especially bad, far worse than down here in Sacramento. Visibility there was probably less than a mile. It is much better now that the wind has finally blown much of the smoke out of the valley, but it was quite bad this past weekend.

My friend Brian and I thought about going on a big hike this past weekend up north, but a combination of the smoke and heat put a damper into our hiking plans. I just had no energy to do any kind of serious hiking. Brian, either intentionally, or perhaps subconsciously, or maybe just cuz he had no sleep the previous night, forgot his hiking boots anyway. Some of the highways in the area were also closed as well so that limited our options. Our idea was to travel north up towards Mt. Shasta, in an attempt to escape the smoke. It is only an hour drive north of Redding, and I had not much hope of getting out of the smoke. I didn’t think Shasta would even be visible at all. But alas, our journey was not in vain. It was clearer up there. Shasta was indeed visible. And the bit of haze and smoke that was in the air created some amazing colour as the sun rose above the horizon. We climbed up above Castle Lake, a short 1 mile hike, which provided an amazing sunrise view of the lake with Mt. Shasta in the background, not to mention some incredible red and pink colour in the sky thanks to the smoke. I guess I would have to say it was worth the drive up there from Redding after all.

On the next morning of camping, I crawled out of my cozy sleeping bag even earlier, and I think it was even colder than the previous morning. I could not get my dog, Kaya, to come with me this time. She is such a wimp. I didn’t really want to take her anyway, cuz I wasn’t planning on going on any much of a hike.

I drove back up the hill from Devil’s Postpile Natl. Monument to Twin Lakes, which is near the village of Mammoth Lakes. Mammoth Lakes is at a higher elevation, and there was a lot more snow still hanging around. Strangely enough, though, it was colder down at Devil’s Postpile. It was still quite dark as I began driving from the campsite. As I drove along, I thought to myself that this is a good time of day to see bears. Whenever I see them, it is usually at this time of day, before sunrise. Then I thought to myself, yeah, I’d better be careful to stay awake and not hit any with the car (I still hadn’t had any coffee yet). Or, I thought, I’d better be careful not to hit any deer, or any other kind of animal that might be out and about. Immediately after this thought, I see a fat, little, porcupine waddling across the road in front of my car. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a porcupine in the wild before, so it was neat to see one. I stopped the car and watched it on the side of the road. It flicked up its tail at me, and so I decided to keep going before it flung its quills into my tires (did you ever see the Veggie Tales’ Jonah movie?). Then immediately after seeing the porcupine, I saw a black bear in the meadow beside the road. It was just a small bear, maybe only 1 year old (like I know how to tell a bear’s age), and it scampered away as soon as he saw my car. No sign of any momma bear around.

So anyway, on up to Twin Lakes and Twin Falls. I wanted to get there by sunrise. I knew the sun would be hitting the falls first thing in the morning. Twin Falls is a spectacular cascade falling about 250 ft. down from Lake Mamie, and is best seen in the spring when the snow is melting. It is quite impressive. The name of the waterfall is not really much of a mystery. It is not because there are 2 waterfalls. It is named after the lakes that it drops into: Twin Lakes. But the name of the lakes is quite a mystery, and quite silly. There are not 2 “twin” lakes. There are actually 3 lakes. Why they called them Twin Lakes is completely beyond me. I vote to change the names to Triplet Lakes, and Triplet Falls. Yeah, that sounds better.

It is possible to get right up to the base of Twin Falls, but I did not bother, though if I had more time I would have certainly done that. Instead, I wanted to get to a certain other waterfall before the sun got too high in the sky. So off I went to find it.

Back to the Eastern Sierra.

Here is another view of Minaret Falls, which is more in your face, and I think I like it even better than the first view. This is just showing the upper section of the falls, shot right beside the waterfall. I could feel the mist in my face as I stood beside these impressive falls. What an awesome experience. Is it any wonder I am a waterfall-aholic, when I can experience such an amazing part of God’s beautiful creation.

The best part is, there was no one else around at Minaret Falls when I was here in the evening. Indeed, there weren’t too many people in the Devil’s Postpile Natl. Monument all weekend. We were one of the very few campers in our campground. It does get quite busier in the summer no doubt.

Wild adventure part II.

Here I am at Grass Lake and there is a spectacular 150 ft. high waterfall off in the distance. How can I get there? There is no trail leading up to the waterfall. The trail officially ends at Grass Lake. It seems a bit brushy, more than I anticipated. But today I am determined. My mind was set days ago. I would shoot sunrise at the lake, then work my way up to the waterfall. Nothing would stop me. Not thick manzanita brush. Not a torrent from Heather Lake’s outlet that I needed to cross. Not any number of immense talus slides that I needed to cross. Not a steep cliff section that I could only cross safely by grabbing onto manzanita brush and pulling myself across it (that stuff is good for something after all). Not a very steep, crumbly, rocky slope that I needed to scramble up in order to get up to the waterfall viewpoint. Not wondering how I would ever get back down all that. I encountered all these things on my way up to Susie Lake Falls. As I said, I was determined to get to this waterfall. And let me tell you, it was worth every penny. What a gorgeous waterfall. Nothing beats standing right next to a powerful, beautiful 100+ foot waterfall, feeling the spray on your face. At a spot where very few people, if any, have ever been before. Susie Lake Falls was officially bagged. But did I break the cardinal rule of waterfall hunting?

The above photo was taken with my 70-200mm lens from Grass Lake. It is my favourite shot of the waterfall. I am glad I did not leave that lens at home after all. The below photo (just to prove to you that I did make it there) is from up close beside Susie Lake Falls:

But the wild adventure is not over yet.

My second goal for the day was to get up to Heather Lake, where I had heard there was another small waterfall. I also had a grand goal of making it to Lake Aloha, and perhaps even Half Moon Lake as well. It was a classic case of my eyes being bigger than my stomach (or in this case, my body). I had initially thought I might be able to scale the cliffs to get to the top of Susie Lake Falls. No way that was happening. The cliffs around the falls were way too steep. On the other side, maybe it could be done. But there was no way to get across the creek easily. I had another idea, however. Why not follow Heather Creek’s drainage on up to Heather Lake that way. It looked rather do-able. The terrain looked open, and it didn’t look very steep to my eyes, or on my topo map. But I couldn’t see what was around the corner up there. I might get all the way up there and reach a dead-end. Then I’d have to turn back to Grass Lake. That would really suck petunias. But I thought I could do it all right. It would be a grand adventure in the making. More thick manzanita brush. More immense talus slides to cross. I got about halfway up the drainage, and all of a sudden my legs started to protest, scream, rebel. They were tired. Too tired. Over tired. Too late to go back down. The cardinal rule of waterfall hunting is to have enough “oomph” to make it out of the canyon at the end of the day. I just only had to get up to Heather Lake, then I could take the easy, well-maintained trail all the way back down to the trailhead where I parked. I had to continue on. And so I did. Slowly.

I finally made it up. Along the way, just a short distance below the lake, I found Heather Lake Falls. I had heard it was just a small 20 foot waterfall. I wasn’t expecting much of anything here. What I found, instead, was a beautiful 38 ft. high, fan-type waterfall. Not only that, there was a double falls here as a small stream fed by snow melt from the mountains, made its way down and formed a second waterfall at the same location. I took this photo from the top of that small stream looking over at Heather Lake Falls. What a beautiful location, and a perfect spot to eat my sandwich. So I did.

Once up at Heather Lake, I was way way way too tired to think of doing any additional hiking (ie. to Lake Aloha). So I made my way back down the trail to the car. It was very slow going. My legs had completely had it with me. I had scratches all over my legs. I had blisters on my feet. I had sunburn. Fortunately, it was (mostly) all downhill. But even so, it took a very long time to hike back down. But I made it. And what an incredible adventure in the Desolation Wilderness, going where few have gone before.