After work I took Journey and drove up the hill. I’ve wanted to check this place out for awhile now and it finally seemed like the time to do it. It is partly off trail but I did not think it would be too hard or steep for Journey.
I had loaded the route and map into my GPS but for some reason it did not load properly. Thankfully there was cell service here so I downloaded the map into my phone. If there was no service I’m not sure if I would have been able to find the waterfall. It’s always good to check your map before you leave the house (obviously I did not do that!).
This area is all part of the massive Caldor Fire of 2021. All the trees were scorched. We found a parking spot and started hiking down the logging road. There were already mosquitoes out. I had heard this from another person recently as well. This is crazy to me. It is only April. At least they were not biting yet. Anyhow, I think that Journey did not really want to hike today. She was going slow and stopping and I felt she wanted to go back to the car. She had been playing hard with mom all day long so she was probably quite tired to begin with. Nonetheless, I encouraged her to continue on. When we came to the large snow patches on the road, she perked up notably. She wanted to run in the snow! She was so excited. She loves the snow!
Eventually we came to the off trail section where we would go down to the river. It was not difficult. The last part was a bit steep but Journey did fine. We came to the waterfall. I was quite disappointed. I really thought this one would be a lot nicer and a lot cleaner. I have a feeling it was a lot nicer before the fire. It is a 30 ft. cascade, but not very interesting and hardly worth taking a photo. I did take a photo of it though. What do you think?
Journey ate a snack and then we hiked back up the mountain. It was a bit tough and we were both tired when we got back to the road. At least I was tired. I think Journey had gotten her second wind and was happy hiking back down the road. She knew we were on our way back. We arrived at the car just after dark and drove home. It was a lovely evening in the scorched Eldorado National Forest.
This is not a recent image. This is from March 2009. This past weekend I went back to Rock Creek Falls with Journey, thinking that she would have no trouble getting down to the waterfall. I forgot one important thing about the hike, however.
We arrived at the trailhead and started the hike down to the creek on the One Eye Trail. It is so named because back in the old days a mountain lion attacked a miner on this trail and he lost an eye. I love these old names from history. We did not see any mountain lion but we did see quite a few deer. Journey was quite interested in the deer but they did not let us get very close to them.
The trail starts out as a nice wide road but soon becomes a single track. There is poison oak and there are ticks. It was impossible to keep Journey out of the poison oak. My primary concern was keeping the ticks off of her (and me). I went first on this section and swatted them off the bushes with my hiking pole as we went along. I did not see very many of them on the hike (less than 5). However, when we got back up to the road later I had to pluck about 6 or 7 of them off of Journey. How did she get so many ticks on her? I don’t understand, there should not have been any on her at all. I hoped I got them all off her. When I got home I found more on her and those ones were embedded and more difficult to remove. In retrospect, I should not have taken her on this hike, however, I did not think the ticks would be so bad because of the rain and cold weather. My mistake.
Anyway, we arrived down at Rock Creek. There was a lot of water flowing as I expected, but it was not in flood stage (as it was in March 2009). From here you need to rock scramble downstream. This is difficult. Journey did very well and we made it down almost to the brink of the waterfall, however at this point she could not continue any further. The water was too deep and it was too difficult or dangerous for her. At lower flows I think she could have made it but there was just too much water today. We retreated back upstream, had our lunch by the creek, and then climbed out of the canyon and back to the car. Even though we did not make it to the destination, it was still a great hike for Journey in Eldorado National Forest.
The final snow stats are in as of Apr 1: snow pack is 124% of normal (north), 107% (central), and 100% (south). Precipitation is at 97% (north), 86% (central), 85% (south). So as you can see we ended the season just slightly above normal for snow pack. After the Great Blizzard the first weekend in March we had nothing at all until the last week. It is a bit unfortunate it is not more but it is pretty good. We will have a good spring season for waterfallin.
I had never been to Pinnacles National Park before and Saturday of Easter weekend seemed like a good day to try it. I was not expecting too much. It had rained over two inches there in the past week. I was hoping to see at least three decent waterfalls and something else as well. Meh. It turned out to be better than I expected, exactly as I expected, and also worse than I expected.
I was risen at 3AM. It is a very long drive. Thus the reason I had not been there before. Also it does not rain much there. Thus the second reason. I arrived at sunrise. There were already people there starting out on the cave trail before me.
I wanted to do the cave trail first. This is a very popular hike and I did not want to do it with a lot of other people on the trail. I saw just three other groups on the trail so it wasn’t too bad. I first came upon Moses Springs Falls, a tall 72 ft. waterfall but not exactly a high flowing stream. With the recent rain, however, it was kinda cool to stand right under this one. My photo (to be posted laster) did not do it justice, it was much better in person. Unfortunately there is poison oak there and I did not realize it before I touched it. Ugh.
After this you enter the caves. This was perhaps the highlight of the hike. It was much better than anticipated and very cool. A lot of the time you are hiking through the creek bed. It is completely dark. (of course I had my headlamp). The deepest part was up to my shins. One section you had to climb straight up a small cascade. Other parts were so narrow I could barely fit through them. I had to really squeeze (and I am not fat, obviously). There are a couple decent waterfalls in here as well but it is too dark to photograph them. One in particular I thought for quite some time about trying to photograph but decided not to.
After the caves you come to some steps to climb up and beside the main highlight: Bear Gulch Cave Falls, 34 ft. high. This is the main waterfall I wanted to see on this trip. I knew it would be decent after the rain, and it was just exactly as I expected. It is a bit difficult to photograph from halfway up the steps. I’m not sure how much of the waterfall is man-made, being just below the man-made reservoir, but it is a very pretty drop.
I went back down on the Rim trail and when I got back to my car I found the parking lot completely full (it is not a big lot). I drove down to the lower lot and it was almost completely full as well. It was only about an hour after sunrise. I first hiked down to the lower Bear Gulch Creek Falls but found it completely dry. That was very disappointing especially because there was quite a bit of water in the creek (it seems to go underground before the waterfall). For my third hike, I wanted to hike up the Condor Gulch trail for two reasons: One, there are a couple waterfalls on this hike. I was not expecting much from them and it was even worse than I expected. The trail comes to the top of Condor Gulch Falls but there is no view of the waterfall. It did not look like much of a waterfall anyway but I’ll maybe try again some other day when it is flowing better.
The second reason I wanted to hike up this trail was to see the condors. I have never seen any condors in the wild before, and “Condor Gulch” seemed like a good spot to see some. I was right on all accounts. There were many soaring above me. I did not go all the way to the top but came to an open spot where it seemed a perfect place for lunch and to watch the birds soaring through the canyon. As soon as I arrived, one of them flew right over my head very close. I did not have my camera ready, but a short while later it happened again, and this time I did have my camera ready. I’m not sure I got any decent shots of it, however, because my tripod was not working properly. We’ll see. Anyway, it was a very cool experience seeing these amazing birds. When it started to rain, I hiked back down to the car and then made the long drive home. I was so tired I slept for 11 hours that night. I was up in time for church to celebrate the most important day of the year. Jesus risen from the grave to save us, all of us. It was a great weekend at Pinnacles National Park.
I did not get the poison oak itch too horribly bad. A few spots. I have had better but I have had worse. I definitely made the right decision leaving early and washing up when I got home. My wife still thinks I am an idiot for hiking anyplace where this is oak. LOL. But dang, Manning Falls was an awesome waterfall.
This is Upper Salmon Creek Falls. It was not particularly easy getting down to it. The slope is steep and the ground is very hard. You will definitely be sliding down, not walking down. Thankfully there is no cliff. I was very much impressed with this one, it was much better than I expected. I measured it to be 26 ft. high, but it seems more like 36 ft. when you are down there. It is better in real life than in pictures. It is a beauty.
The sun is out. It is time for backpacking! Let’s go to Big Sur!
I wasn’t really sure about this hike as far as a backpacking trip goes. It is only a 2 mile hike. I could easily do it as a day hike. The problem is that it is so far from home. There is no way I could do it as a day hike. Either I would have to stay in a hotel somewhere, or stay in a campground somewhere, or backpack. I chose to backpack.
I arrived at the Salmon Creek Falls trailhead at about 9:15am. I went up to the waterfall by the road first. I was quite surprised at how strongly Salmon Creek Falls was flowing. It has not rained in quite some time. The Great Blizzard was two weeks ago but even with that storm the central coast did not get that much rain. I figured Salmon Creek would be mellow. Instead it was roaring. It was a good sign.
I continued up to camp and arrived about noon. This trail was a lot easier than I expected as well. I thought there would be a lot more elevation gain in the two miles up to camp. The campsite was not very exciting. There was very little sun. That might be good in the summer, but not so much in the winter. I had my lunch, set up camp, relaxed for a few hours (trying to find some sun to sit in), ate my dinner, then set out on a waterfall search.
I thought it would be a pretty easy hike to the first waterfall. It was less than a mile from camp. It was off-trail of course but I thought it would take an hour at most, probably less. It took 2 hours. And it was certainly not easy. In fact, it was absolutely grueling. It was almost impossible. And the poison oak!
From the trail you need to scramble down a very steep and hard slope to Salmon Creek, cross Salmon Creek, and then scramble up to the falls. Once down at Salmon Creek I could not find the creek confluence. It was not exactly where it is indicated on the USGS Topo map and the location was not obvious. I eventually found it. I thought it would be an easy creek walk up to the falls. Ha! It started out well enough but soon I came to a blockage (small waterfall) with no way to continue. There was a bit of a path (people have been to this one before), and it seemed to go up and around the blockage, however this route did not work either. I got cliffed out.
By now I had spent a lot more time in this canyon than anticipated and it was starting to get late. I was ready to give up and I started to head back down. I decided to try one more thing, climbing straight up the mountain to the very top of the ridge. Maybe I could traverse the ridge and at least get a good view of the waterfall from the top. It was not easy. I came to a few difficult spots. I thought about turning back more than once. I did not really want to continue on, it was much too hard, but I decided to at least go on until I reached my turn-around time. The biggest problem along the traverse was the poison oak. It was atrocious and unavoidable. I was in it like gangbusters. I could now glimpse the top of the falls but there was no clear view. I had to descend down across a steep ravine and up the other side. The waterfall was right there but still no clear view. There was a steep descent down to the bottom. I did not want to do it (I would have to climb back up after), but now I was so close that I had to do it. I made it down to the base of the waterfall. The poison oak down at the bottom was out of this world. I have never seen so much. I could not get photos from up close because it was so misty so I had to find a spot further back, setting up my tripod and standing right in the middle of the oak. This was not going to be pretty later.
Manning Falls is 100 ft. high exactly. Touchdown! I don’t know if it is named after Eli or Peyton. ha ha. Actually I think it is named after the person who discovered it. That’s kinda crappy. How many waterfalls have I discovered and none named after me. Well, Manning Falls is very pretty at low flows but at high flow like this it is spectacular. Absolutely magnificent. Was it worth the effort? I think so but maybe ask me again in a couple days when I see how bad my poison oak is.
It took an hour to hike back to the trail. There was still time so I went to Upper Salmon Creek Falls. This was easier but still quite hard to get down to.
When I got back to camp it was a little before sunset. I knew the poison oak would be bad so I made a new decision. I would pack up, hike back to the car in the dark, and drive home so I could wash up. I arrived back home at about 1am. So essentially this turned out to be just a day hike after all (carrying a heavy backpack) but I think it was a good decision. It was an incredible day in Silver Peak Wilderness.
