Leon Turnbull Photography

On New Year’s Day for my first hike of 2018, I decided to head up to the Montgomery Creek area to try to find a new waterfall. The first 4.5 miles of the hike was easy and it took about 1.5 hours. The last 0.5 miles of the hike was ridiculous and it took about 1.5 hours. Then I had to hike it all in reverse. It took the same amount of time. I’m not joking.

The waterfall is a long way from nowhere. The last time I was up in this area I was taking my friend Brian Rueb to see a 5 foot waterfall. Well, it was not intentional, but that is how it worked out. I think that might have been the last time he hiked with me. This is one of the main reasons why I like to hike alone. I like to explore new areas to find new waterfalls that no one has been to before. Many times I strike out and do not find anything. I hate it when I bring someone out somewhere and end up not getting anywhere for whatever reason. They probably hate me for it. I’m not sure that is what Brian was thinking, but in my mind that is what I was thinking that he was thinking. Is that proper English? I did ask my son Jadon to come with me on this hike. However, it is probably a very good thing that he declined. He can’t hate me because I am his father, but maybe he would have hated me for a short time. This hike was ridiculous!

The hike started out on a dirt road, and was mostly flat the entire 4.5 miles. It was very pleasant hiking, following the creek, which was sometimes out of sight, but sometimes in view from the road.

As I was hiking along, I saw some fresh bobcat tracks and scat in the road. As I was thinking about this and wondering if I would come across the creature, I saw a strange animal come bounding toward me on the road. When it saw me, it came to a dead stop. A few seconds later it ran off into the bushes and out of sight. He was far too quick to allow me to get the camera out, but it was definitely a ringtail! I have never seen one of these animals before; apparently they were quite common back in mining days, but now they are very rare (and also nocturnal, so I’m not sure what this little dude was thinking – a late New Year’s Eve night partying, I guess). Anyhow, it was very cool.

I continued on, finally arriving at my creek crossing. From here, it is just a half mile up the creek to the waterfall. The brush along the creek was pure absurdity! I tried walking up the creekbed, walking alongside the creek, and walking up high above the creek. It was bad bad bad everywhere. Thankfully, there was not much poison oak and no ticks. (both of which was surprising – but I was not complaining). There was a bit of poison oak, however, and I did get a small rash but not too badly. After much effort, I finally got to a spot where I could see the waterfall ahead of me (with still a large amount of brush to battle through to get to it). I could see that it was a good one and a tall one. You might think that this would give me motivation and resolve to be able finish the hike, but even at this point I still considered giving up. That is how bad the brush was. I knew I still had a tough battle ahead of me. It was at this point I realized I had lost my tripod somewhere in the brush behind me. It was my cheaper one, but it was still a $70 tripod, and I had to go back to get it. It was not very close behind me either. I had to go all the way back to where I had climbed up a steep section from the creekbed. I finally found it. Then I had to turn around and go back through all that brush again!

The terrain was very steep as I got up close to the waterfall with a big dropoff to get back down to the creek. I found a way, though, which was right beside the cliff at the base of the falls. More brush. Then I had to climb down a big log (hoping it was securely in place), and I finally reached the base of the waterfall. It certainly is a fabulous waterfall, dropping 80 ft. high. It would be amazing at higher flows, but will I ever return here? Not likely.

On the return trip, I stayed higher above the creek. Not much better. I finally got back to the road. It was late now, well past lunchtime, and I was about 4 hours behind my anticipated end to the hike. Ah well, it was a good way to start 2018, and it was worth the effort … I think.

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December is the first month of winter, and so it is the time when we officially start measuring the snow pack in California. As of January 1, things are not looking good: The rainfall is at 65% of average for Northern CA, 37% (Central CA), and 22% (Southern CA). The snowpack is at 24% of average (North), 33% (Central), and 23% (South). At first I was not too concerned about this awful dry spell we had in December. We had a decent November and it looked like the pattern was going to change to a wet January. However, now it looks like the ridge will be building back into the west coast in January as of next week, and that means we are headed for another dry spell. This is really bad news. Hopefully this time, it will not be a long one. We need to pray for much more snow and rain in California, and soon.

We headed up to Canada at Christmas to visit my family in Cranbrook BC. Usually we go to my mom’s in Rossland, which has the best ski hill in the world (I am biased), but this year we went to Cranbrook where my sister lives, and we skied in Kimberley instead. It was COLD! At the beginning of the week, the temperature was around -15 to -20 Celsius. That is about -5 Fahrenheit for my American friends. That is too cold to ski or do much of anything. However, my kids did go up for a couple rounds on the ski hill anyway, and it warmed up (slightly) later in the week.

As for all the waterfalls? Well, they were completely frozen of course. I was not surprised. Nonetheless, my wife and I drove to Fernie for one day, and we went on a snowshoe hike to Fairy Creek Falls, which I had not been to before.

There was about 4 inches of fresh snow, so we got out our snowshoes for the easy hike. We could have hiked in our boots, but there were some spots that were deeper, so I am glad we opted for the snowshoes. The hike starts off with a very steep hill to climb. My wife was not amused, and wondered what I was getting her into. I had no idea, but she did not believe me. I do not have Canadian maps on my GPS, so I really had no idea about the terrain, but from what I had read, I knew it had to be an easy hike, and only about 1 mile in length. It was actually 1.4 miles, and after the initial climb, the terrain leveled out and the rest of the hike was fairly easy.

It was very beautiful as well, hiking through the forest in the fresh snow. We read signs, however, that Fernie is in the process of developing this entire area and putting houses in here. This would be incredibly awful and it would ruin this hike entirely. Instead of hiking through a gorgeous forest, you will be hiking past many houses. Residents of Fernie should be very upset about this in my opinion.

Anyway, we finally came to the waterfall. It was very pretty, and it was not entirely frozen as I expected it to be. It was gorgeous in the snow, a true Fairyland, and very much living up to its real name, a real life Fairy Tale. It was a bit tricky getting right up to the bottom of the falls in the snow, as it was steep and slippery, but I did go up close to it. The best views, however, were from further back, up on the hillside (where I took this photo from).

On the way back, we saw a few hikers coming up the trail. None of them wearing snowshoes. They probably thought we were some weird Californians, but my answer to that is that we padded down the snow for them so they would not need snowshoes. They should have thanked us. Am I right?

P.S. If you are wondering about my title to this blog post, it is the name of an old song which I love, by Plumb. It has nothing to do with waterfalls, but look it up if you are interested in the song. You will like it.

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My latest Waterfall Madman video release is here! This is a snowshoe hike to Mill Creek Falls in Lassen Volcanic National Park with my wife. Mill Creek Falls is one of the taller waterfalls in Lassen Volcanic Natl Park CA, 69 ft. high, and is arguably the nicest waterfall in the park. It was fun and adventurous, and a bit difficult. Please enjoy watching (in HD).

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It has been four years since I’ve been to see my old friend, Feather Falls. I figured it was well past time to make a visit.

Why? Well one reason was I wanted to make a video of the Feather Falls hike. I accomplished this successfully, and it will be ready for viewing sometime in January. I started making videos again, and this time they are new and exciting and high quality, so if you have not seen them yet, please check them out and follow waterfallmadman on youtube. I appreciate the support. I have a brand new one being released next weekend. Do not miss it!

So anyhow, I arrived at the Feather Falls trailhead before sunrise. There were some people camping here (in the campground). The weird thing is that one of the cars had Christmas lights on (inside it). It kind of freaked me out seeing that so early in the morning. I am kidding. Sort of. I was not expecting to see anyone there. Definitely not that.

I started my hike in the dark. I had a couple hours to make it to the waterfall before the sun would get to it. I had plenty of time, but not enough to dilly daddle too much. I hiked quickly.

Frey Creek had pretty good flow in it. This is a good sign and made me happy. Even though we are in a long dry spell and even though we have not had a lot of rain yet this winter, the waterfalls are flowing already. They did not need very much precipitation to get started this winter. I think that a lot of people do not realize this (that the waterfalls are flowing already). In some areas, though, such as the coast, they are going to need a lot more water of course. I pray that this dry spell ends soon and we have a good winter.

One thing that did not make me happy: the ticks!!! They were everywhere, just dripping off the grasses along the trail. This is the second hike already this winter where I’ve seen a lot of ticks. It is only early December. They should not even be out yet! I am predicting this is going to be a horrendous year for ticks. I think it is because of the very wet winter we had last year, due to that, the ticks are going to be awful this year. Last year, remember, the ticks were not very bad at all. This is my theory. Whatever the reason, they are already bad bad bad this year and I do not like it. The good thing is that the Feather Falls trail is very wide and it was mostly easy to avoid getting lurched upon by the little buggers.

Before too long, I arrived at the Feather Falls viewpoint. The waterfall was booming! Well, perhaps not exactly booming, but it was flowing strong and it was awesome. Feather Falls never fails to disappoint. It is truly magnificent. Of course we all know by now the true height of Feather Falls, that it is 410 ft. high and not 640 ft. high. Of course we all know who is responsible for that correct measurement. I do not really see anyone using the old incorrect height anymore, but when I do see people using the correct height, they never credit yours truly. Oh cry me a river, I know. Anyway, I wanted to re-measure the height this time around. I only measured it the one time and there is some error involved when doing this. I am happy to report that my new measurement was very close to 410 ft., in fact it was so close that I am confident to keep the 410 ft. figure as the true height of the waterfall.

I thought about trying to get down to the bottom of the waterfall. That is all. I just thought about it. The main thing that stopped me from trying: the poison oak looked horrendous down there. I just did not feel like dealing with the oak today. My friend Rob the mountain goat almost made it down to the bottom awhile ago, but was stopped mostly by poison oak so I knew it would be bad the entire 410 ft. to the bottom. I could see it would be bad, so that is enough thinking about that. I went to the top of the waterfall instead and took a timeout inside the cage at the brink of the falls. It really is a bit crazy getting into the cage. The rock is smooth and very slippery. One little missed step and you are a goner. People have gone bye bye here in the past. I actually did slip on it one time, but I was already inside the case and so was in a safe spot. Still, just that little slip freaks you out. I still had to climb back out of the cage afterwards. And then I did it all a second time with my video camera. Don’t even consider trying this stunt if the rocks are at all wet.

I hiked back to the trail loop junction and sat down on the bench and ate my lunch. As I was sitting there eating, I heard the sound of a plane. It got louder and louder and louder and louder. I stood up, looking around for it. Then I saw it. A jet screamed by, flying very low, and clearly faster than the speed of sound. Boom! I heard the sonic boom as it went overhead. It was so very loud! Wow. It seemed to me that it was flying straight up the Fall River Canyon, and right over Feather Falls. It would have been absolutely awesome to have been at the overlook at the time it flew over, although perhaps it would have destroyed my ear drums. Nonetheless, I regret not eating my lunch at the overlook. Ah well.

 

 

 

 

 

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New video release in 1 week! Are you ready?

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