Hiking Snow Creek Falls

Inland Empire Travelog #9
Moravia, Idaho - Sat, 15 May 2021. 3:30pm.

After a hit and a partial-miss with finding waterfalls described in our Very Dull Book of Waterfalls guidebook this morning— Copper Creek Falls was a hit, Smith Creek Falls a mostly-miss— we had both a hit and miss with Snow Creek Falls this afternoon. It was a miss in that, once again, the directions in the guidebook were inaccurate. Road names were wrong, turns were missing, and distance measurements were off. But like I wrote in my previous blog, sometimes in losing one thing we find something even better. We drove around looking for where the trail might be and found an even better trail than the one described in the guidebook. This trail would take us to three waterfalls. That was totally a hit.

The trail we found was somewhat popular. In fact, that's part of how we found it. There were 6 or 7 other cars there. By norther Idaho standards the place was mobbed!

A well maintained trail angled down the hillside, gently at first then more steeply. It branched at an unmarked junction. One branch went lower; the other climbed. We took the lower branch first and descended to Lower Snow Creek Falls.



There's almost too much water in waterfalls such as this right now. The water's churning so hard it's hard to appreciate the flow. Not to mention, the spray can be pretty intense. But this is high flow season. The stream are all swollen with snow melt. Yes, there's still snow atop the 5,000' peaks in this area!

We retraced our steps to the forks and climbed the upper branch to Upper Snow Creek Falls.



The upper falls really were hard to appreciate because of the heavy flow. There's a viewing area at the right side of the picture above... but it's hard to see anything from it because of the intense spray blowing from the falls. I found this perch 100' downstream that afforded a calmer view.

A bonus on this trail is that there's actually a third waterfall in between lower and upper. Call it Middle Snow Creek Falls.



The trail in this area was very precarious. The formal trail ended at the soaked viewing spot I mentioned above. I picked my way downstream a bit for the second pic. For this third one I was following a very narrow foot trail with steep dropoffs. If I were feeling more adventurous— or foolhardy— I could have pushed on maybe 10' farther to try for a different angle on the falls below me.

Jeru Falls Fail. That Dratted Book.

Inland Empire Travelog #10
North of Sand Point, Idaho - Sat, 15 May 2021. 4:30pm.

Today was supposed to be an epic waterfall hiking day. We'd take five hikes to waterfalls. Alas, it has been a day of hits and misses because the guidebook we used to plan this trip is full of inaccuracies.

I wrote years ago about the book we call Dr. Smedley Q. Boredom's Very Dull Book of Waterfalls. Technically it's Waterfall Lover's Guide Pacific Northwest by Gregory Plumb. We give it our own (un)loving pet name because it's, frankly, very dull. And now we've found it's also frustratingly inaccurate. Three things:

1) The author is a college professor who writes in a passive and occasionally stilted style that embodies some of the worst stereotypes of academic prose.

2) The author focuses more on hydrology than hiking. It's like the book was written primarily to document the existence of waterfalls and rate them by their flow as measured in cubic feet per minute. (Yes, the book actually lists cfm ranges for each falls.) Descriptions of their scenic value are sparse, as are details about the hiking trails to get to some of them.

3) As we've been finding out on this trip especially, the book is full of inaccuracies. Driving routes to the waterfalls or their hiking trails have streets misnamed, are missing turns, and/or have distances wrong by miles. Moreover, once we've gotten to several of the supposed trailheads we've found that they're on private property with fences, locked gates, and copious "No Trespassing" signs. Some of the places have been closed up so long that any evidence there may once have been a hiking trail there is gone.

I'm writing this now after expressing my frustration about the book in several recent blog entries because we've just had another hiking fail. The directions for Jeru Falls were off by a few miles, and when we did finally find Jeru Creek it was clearly on private property. We're running about 50/50 this whole trip for waterfalls listed in this book.

I think I find this especially frustrating because we have a love-hate relationship with the book. We love it because it lists so many waterfalls, including smaller and more remote ones that other guidebooks skip over. But we hate it because it has let us down with inaccuracies so many times.

"Why not use the book as a starting point for your own research?" you might ask. Indeed, we already do that. We use the book to identify places we'd like to go, then cross reference its directions against things like Google Maps and web searches for online hiking sites. It's only by doing this that we haven't suffered more fails this trip! Plus, among the search results we found a companion website for the book. Its vintage, MySpace-like web design is a laugh!

Flat Tire!

Inland Empire Travelog #11
Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho - Sat, 15 May 2021. 6pm.

On our way to our fifth and final waterfall trek of the day today we caught a flat tire. We were driving up a remote forest service road about 10 miles out from the shores of Lake Pend Oreille when POP! A rock on the gravel road punctured our left front tire.

For a moment I wasn't sure if anything had happened, but then the Hsss... Hsss... Hsss sound told me we'd likely caught a flat. The tire pressure alert light came on a few seconds later as I was already looking for a wide enough, flat enough spot on the remote, dirt-and-gravel road to replace the tire.



For a lot of people nowadays a flat tire is a case of, "Uh-oh, better call for help!" I did consider the possibility of needing to call for help... as a worst case scenario. And it would need to be a worst case, as out here we were 10 miles of primitive road away from cell reception and hadn't seen other people for at least the past 5 miles. We would need to be self-rescuing princes and princesses.

Fortunately it wasn't more than 100 yards or so to a flat, wide spot on the trail. We pulled the spare and tools from the trunk and I got to work.



When raising a car on a jack it's important to block the wheels so they don't roll. Otherwise the car could pivot off the jack and cause damage and injury! Now, wheel chocks aren't a thing cars come with. Owners manuals advise blocking the wheel with a handy loose brick, but if you're not the kind of person who has loose bricks hanging around (really, who does?!?!) you have to improvise.

We improvised with my hiking boots!

With the boots in place plus the hand brake set I got to work on jacking the car.



Fortunately this car's tools were in good condition, if a bit undersized for the weight of the vehicle. The spare was a temporary tire, though, a "50/50" — as in designed for up to 50 miles of use at speeds not exceeding 50 mph. Also as in, 50/50 are your chances of getting back safely. 😨

Getting back safely was the main thing on my mind. This road had already claimed one regular tire on the way up. Would we be able to get back down without further mishap? Would the skinny, barely treaded 50/50 tire handle safely the gravel road? It was 10 miles back to the nearest paved road and fringes of cell phone reception.

Well, from the fact I'm writing this, you can tell the answer is Yes, we did get back safely. 😅 The tire made it back down the gravel road.

We're now at the shores of Lake Pend Oreille, on the phone with the car rental company's emergency roadside assistance. We're on hold. "Wait times are over 15 minutes," the robot informs us. 😠

We don't expect the rental company to send a tow truck out to us, BTW. We're just checking with them for instructions on how to proceed. Including, particularly, where is the nearest depot or repair shop we can go to. With that 50/50 spare already getting us down the mountain we don't necessarily have a lot of runway left!

Keep reading: How far can we push our luck with 50/50?