Photo Hike: The falls in Big Basin 10.5 mi +-400

Folks, I've organized a Photo Hike for Saturday morning, May 17th.
If you haven't responded, sorry, but I've closed the carpool list. If you show up at the location below, we can still take you.

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The plan:

6:10 am Meet at Skyline Blvd and Hwy 9 [Saratoga Gap] where there is another parking area and carpool point.***
6:40 am arrive Big Basin HQ parking fee $6.00
6:50 am Set out from park HQ to the falls: Golden Cascade, Silver and Berry Creek.
Route: Tentative, but probably Skyline to Berry Creek to Sunset back. [New ROUTE!]

1:00 pm complete hike and head back from park.

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This is a PHOTO hike which means there may be frequent stops and makes this 5 hour hike a six hour hike (or longer) after stops for photos and lunch.


I have never personally taken this trail or been to the falls. A photographer who was at the falls last week told me it is still quite worthwhile. If nothing else it will be a nice, easy hike, eh?

And yes, I KNOW it is a very early start. If you're a photographer you know that the low light angle will make your pictures better, that the morning will be cooler, and that there will be no problem getting parking. Oh, and that you'll be done before the heat of the day and still have your afternoon free.

It is supposed to be WARM this weekend. Bring plenty of water, lunch, a hat, sunscreen. And perhaps some water shoes as we can get our feet wet in the creeks. There may be isolated poison oak about.

PHOTOGRAPHERS: You will want to bring a tripod, polarizing filter and perhaps a lens cleaning cloth.

Not being a photographer, I don't know how the early morning versus the late morning light affects the photography on the Sunset Trail (halfway up the ridge) versus the Skyline to the Sea Trail (at the bottom of the canyon). But the segment from Berry Creek Falls to Sunset Trail Camp is best done going uphill, facing toward the various falls, rather than downhill, facing away from the falls. Just my opinion.

Ron, thanks for the suggestion. How much of the trail is exposed on the Sunset vs. Skyline trails? My goal is to be in the canyon on the way back both for shade and for photo opportunities where more trees means filtered light (and unfortunately more shadows if the filtering is not strong enough).

Also, are there any great views along the Sunset Trail e.g. out to sea? By the map it looks like there may be a vista of one or the other two northern most falls on the Berry Creek trail.

I thought about doing the trail in reverse - in part because it looks like we'd get to the falls faster (earlier in the morning) on the Skyline Trail which appears flatter and more direct.

Is there anything interesting along Timms Creek Trail? We might do a loop from Skyline to Berry Creek to Sunset to Timms to Skyline for a return instead.

Thanks for being my advisor here!

This is a really pretty hiking loop, (so don't let the following discourage you), but it is definitely not a "grand vista" loop. For that, you'll have to come with me to Chalk Mountain and McCrary Ridge in June.

> How much of the trail is exposed on the Sunset vs. Skyline trails?

Close to none, except at one point. Except for the west side of the ridge between the two forks of Berry Creek, everything else is in forest.

On your map, the dashed line that runs north-south that is near headquarters and has "ROAD", two gate symbols, and two horseshoe symbols on it is the Middle Ridge Fire Road. Where Sunset and Skyline cross Middle Ridge is the high point for each of the respective trails for your loop. However, the trails pass through relatively low, moderately forested saddles, so you really don't have more than incidental views.

From there west, the Sunset Trail traverses the ridge only about half-way up, so until you get out to Berry Creek, views to the south toward the ocean are blocked by Mount McAbee, which is the ridge on the south side of Waddell Creek. The Skyline to the Sea Trail stays in the canyon bottom for the most part, so no views there, either. But it does have considerably older, larger trees than Sunset. So the two trails have a different feel to them, and it is worth exploring both.

As mentioned, there is exposure and views from the west side of the ridge between the two forks of Berry Creek. However, this ridge is pretty low. So while you can get some interesting views of the white chalk ridge leading north from Chalk Mountain, you can't see past McAbee, McCrary, Henry, and Chalk to see the ocean.

The falls themselves are in heavily forested deep canyons, and are not visible from any of the ridges or trails that are higher on the slopes. In fact, this may have an impact on lens selection. For any of the falls, you can take pictures looking up from the bottom, or looking down from the top, but you can't really take a head-on picture of the entire falls with a normal lens, because you can't get far enough away from the falls without the trees getting in the way. (None of the falls are taller than the tallest trees surrounding them.)

> trail in reverse ... we'd get to the falls faster

The differences in time and distance are probably not significant, as far as getting to Berry Creek. However, the differences in the falls are probably very significant to a photographer.

Berry Creek Falls (the farthest downstream and the largest) is your typical "white water falling through the air in front of dark rock" type of falls. The Golden Cascades (the farthest upstream and the smallest), on the other hand, is a "clear water flowing across golden rock" type of series of cascades. I'm not a photographer, but I would expect the quality of the light to be vastly more critical at the Golden Cascades than at Berry Creek Falls.

> Is there anything interesting along Timms Creek Trail?

Except for being considerably less traveled, and therefore interesting just because of that, the Timms Creek Trail is pretty indistinguishable from the Sunset Trail.

One last thing. None of the falls require wading for hikers. But for a photographer, I'm guessing a few of the best shots are from locations where you would be standing in the water.

OK, so that wasn't the last thing. After you get done with the loop, walk along Opal Creek in the early afternoon when the sun is high enough overhead to send rays into the water. There is a reason it is called "Opal" Creek.

Have a good trip!

Regarding poison oak. Poison oak doesn't grow under a redwood canopy. So you are safe from it for most of this loop. (Too shady? Wrong soil acidity? I don't know. But if you recall, at Portola Redwoods, we didn't see any more poison oak once we reached the Peters Creek Grove.)

Hi

I have to agree that it is much nicer to go from Berry Creek Falls to Sunset Camp.

I have hiked Timms Creek trail this year, it has a nice creek at the end and some big trees.

I basically made the hike into a figure 8, started counter clockwise crossed over at timms creek and went clock wise for the falls and timms creek again and counter clock wise back up to the parking lot.

Might want to bring exact change for parking, not sure if the kiosk will be staffed that early, they might have some of those self reg. envelopes.

Just my 5 cents'

Chris

For what it's worth, the hike described in the base note as "Route: tentative" would score a 15 on the Holley scale. This would make it harder than a typical Black Mountain event, but easier than a typical Mount Tamalpais event.

Based on the great comments, I've rerouted the trip. We're now taking the skyline trail first. And if it's too hot, we may take that back so that we can stay in and around the creek where there is water.

As of now there are 3 yes. So it's a small crowd.

Also note, the Winchester Light Rail pickup is off the table. See above for an alternative carpool location.

There were just two of us. We had the place to ourselves until about 11:00 am. With only two and lots to photograph we took our time finishing the hike at about 2:30 instead of 1:00 pm. So it was more like an AMBLE than a hike, but for reasons neither Leonard or I could understand it was 85% uphill.

We discovered that we really needed to start the hike at about 4 am rather than 6:30 in order to get some color in the sky (from the sunrise). By the time we got to Silver Fall there were a lot of shadows.

A collection of the few things I photographed can be reached by clicking the picture below which is a "Turkey Tail Fungus" (Trametes versicolor).




We saw newts, lizards, a little yellow and black snake, banana slugs, some wild fungus (see the site!) and lots of ferns, and of course, falls.

Awesome photos Steven.