Snow Shoeing in May
Snow shoeing in the middle of May? Are you kidding me? No I am not! Such was my adventure this week, and it was a very fun one!
My goal: To find new waterfalls up on Ice House Rd. in the area of Loon Lake. I only ended up finding two new (small) waterfalls, though I was hoping for a lot more.
I have had loads of trouble getting to sleep at night lately. I have no idea why. But especially when I am planning to wake up very early the next morning to hike, I just haven’t been able to sleep well the night before. Usually when this happens, I turn off the alarm and skip my hike. This time, however, I was determined to get up hiking anyway. I had to. The forecast was for overcast skies on this morning, which is a rarity for California in May. I had a cool plan to attempt to get to multiple waterfalls, and I needed overcast skies in order to have decent light for photography at all of them. It was a great plan, though it did not work out that way. So I got up at 3:30AM with less than an hour of sleep and headed off with my very full coffee cup up Ice House Rd. in the wee hours of the morning.
In the winter, SMUD plows Ice House Rd. all the way to Loon Lake. That is sweet, because otherwise this road would still be snowed in. At about 6000 ft. elevation, there was still a lot of snow on the ground. I was surprised to see so much snow. Loon Lake in fact, was still partially frozen. It looked very beautiful like this, and would make for a great sunrise photo (if the skies were not so overcast, that is). The road to the far end of the lake is not plowed, so once I arrived at Loon Lake I had to get on the snow shoes and walk 2.5 miles to the end. It was a beautiful morning for snow shoeing. I saw some semi fresh bear tracks in the snow, bobcat tracks (I think), and plenty of squirrel tracks. I also saw tire tracks. Apparently, some people had driven this road in their 4×4 to the end. I thought this was a bit crazy, it would be so easy to get stuck in the snow with your vehicle. There was no way in HE double hockey sticks that I would be driving my SUV along this road right now.
At the end of the lake is an outlet stream called Gerle Creek. It was flowing somewhat okay but it is still too early in the year for the full snowmelt to swell this creek to maximum. There are a couple waterfalls on this creek. The first is just a small one, just a little ways down from the lake. It is so small, I missed it on the way down. I was hoping to initially get to a bigger waterfall downstream, but I just could not make it. It was too difficult. Too much snow, brush, and swamp that had to be crossed (but the good news is that I think figured out an easier way to get to this other waterfall, so I will be returning very soon). I decided to turn around and on the way back found this small waterfall. I think it would be more impressive with more water flowing in the creek, but it was still kinda pretty.
Upper Gerle Creek Falls is only 19 ft. high. It would have been nice to move over a bit to the right to get more of the upper portion of the falls in the picture. That would have meant I’d be getting very wet, which I was not prepared to do. Also, my tripod leg had broken! One of the screws had fallen off, nowhere to be found. It had only one screw left and was hanging on by a thread. I was afraid the whole thing would collapse in the middle of taking a picture, and send everything crashing down into the creek, camera included. Nonetheless, I managed to stable it securely enough to take this photo. By this time, the sun had come out as well, making the falls a bit more difficult to photograph. What happened to those overcast skies that were supposed to be here all morning? Oh well, I was done anyway and started the long snow shoe hike back to my vehicle.
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