|
|
7.5 Little Curtain Falls
| |
|
Location: Soda Springs, Tahoe National Forest, Placer County
Height: ~25 ft.
Access:  
Distance: 15.6 miles (RT)
Elevation: 6700 ft. (-2300 ft.)
Season: Jun-Aug
Difficulty: 
Lat/Long:39.24160, -120.43383
Directions:From I-80 at Soda Springs, take the Soda Springs exit. Turn right and drive 0.7 miles to Soda Springs Rd. Turn right and drive 0.8 miles to Pahatsi Rd. Turn right and drive 4.2 miles to the Palisade Creek trailhead. (Pahatsi Rd. becomes Kidd Lakes Rd.). Along this rough dirt road, you will reach a fork at 1.5 miles. Keep to the right, passing Kidd Lake on the left. Just past the Royal Gorge warming hut is a fork. Turn left here, and continue another half-mile to the trailhead. A high-clearance vehicle is recommended for this road.
|
|
Little Curtain Falls is a 25 ft. high waterfall located on the North Fork American River, in the heart of the Royal Gorge.
To reach Little Curtain Falls, you need to hike down the 7 mile long Palisade Creek Trail to the North Fork American River (see my write-up on Palisade Falls for more detailed information on this hike). Once at the river, you need to scramble down into the Royal Gorge for about a mile. There are no trails into the Royal Gorge, so it involves a scramble through poison oak, brush, around huge cliffs, and across immense talus slides. It is slow going and tiring. You will definitely want to camp somewhere down by the river, probably at Palisade Falls. On the way back, my brother-in-law and I decided to walk up right along the river, rather than going up higher through the forest. Even though the river was high, it was much easier going and we were able to pretty much walk the entire distance along the river. There was only one difficult section that required us to scramble up away from the river (this section is located a bit past the unnamed stream west of Palisade Falls, at the base of a huge cliff).
Little Curtain Falls drops 25 ft. along the North Fork American River. When the river is high, it is a fantastic sheet of white water dropping over a ledge. There are a couple nice viewpoints of the waterfall, one is right at the brink of the falls, the other is down beside the river. There is a second smaller waterfall (about 10-15 ft. high), which is located a bit further down stream, right at the point where East Snow Mountain Falls dumps into the river.
The name, Little Curtain Falls, is an unofficial name coined by myself and Russell Towle, who is probably the single most knowledgeable person regarding the North Fork American River. You can see his website from my links page. He actually called this waterfall "Curtain Falls", but I really want to avoid using that name, because there already is another Curtain Falls in northern California, on the middle fork of the Feather River, near Oroville. This waterfall, however, is very similar in appearance to the other (officially named) Curtain Falls, albeit a bit smaller. So thus, I came up with the name: "Little Curtain Falls".
Zoom out on map to see all nearby waterfalls:
Other waterfalls nearby:
|
