The outlet stream to the Triplet, er I mean Twin Lakes is called Mammoth Creek. It drops through a scenic little canyon on its descent to Mammoth Lakes village, and it creates some waterfalls along the way. Right below the bridge at the outlet to the lake, you can find this splendid little 33 ft. high cascade. There is a little trail leading down to it, and it is not too difficult. When the snow has melted more, I think you could get right down to the base and get in the creek if you so desired (which I would, of course). But this day, that snow on the bank was complete ice, and had I attempted to get down there, I would have taken a nasty tumble into the creek, and been washed downstream. So, I took this photo instead from a rather safe, but still scenic, vantage point.

Now if you have Chris Shaffer’s Waterfalls book you may know he mentions Mammoth Creek Falls in it as well. But it is not this waterfall. There is, apparently, another nice little waterfall on Mammoth Creek further downstream from here. I did try to find this other waterfall. But I could not find the “trail” he referred to in this book, and despite annoying some deer having breakfast, I could not see any way through the thick manzanita brush down to the lower falls. I initially concluded that Shaffer was actually referring to this waterfall I have pictured here, and his directions in the book were just really out of whack. However, upon further thought, I realize he is indeed referring to another waterfall further downstream. I do not understand, however, why he made no mention at all of this nice cascade on Mammoth Creek, which is quite easy to reach, and is certainly no slouch in terms waterfallity (is that a word? well, it is now).

You can get to the brink of Twin Falls at Mammoth Lakes pretty easily. From the top you can look down and see the lakes where the waterfall dumps into. But there is not a particularly great view of the waterfall from here. So I scrambled down the bank beside the waterfall to find this spot. I had to climb up on some slippery, spray-splashed rocks right beside a 30 ft. thundering section of the falls. I was getting splashed constantly from behind as I set up the camera to take this shot looking down the waterfall into the Twin Lakes. It was a fun experience. When I got back up to the car, my wife asked me: “So did you go to a dangerous spot?”. I answered: “No, honey! Of course not, honey!”. I’m not sure that she believed me.

This is Faery Falls, a relatively unknown but splendid 41 ft. high waterfall near Lake Siskiyou in Mt. Shasta City. I think it is a much better waterfall to visit in the spring, when the creek is flowing much higher. But it is also a lot more difficult to photograph in the spring. There are not too many vantage points of the waterfall, and in the spring, the creek is flowing too hard to cross, and there is just too much spray at the base of the falls. When my friend Brian and I were here this past weekend, we had more options to photograph the waterfall around the base of the falls, and there was not much spray. Nonetheless, I still think it is a fabulous waterfall to visit when it is flowing hard.

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.