Across Pine Mountain toward Carson Falls

Our trek to Carson Falls near Mt. Tam last Sunday was the second of three great hikes we did in one day. Our choice to stay at a hotel somewhat nearby in Mill Valley the night before really paid off.

Carson Falls is one of the celebrated "Three Cs" in the Mt. Tamalpais watershed. There's Cataract Falls, which we hiked in the morning; Carson Falls; and Cascade Falls. We've been to each of them at least twice before.

I don't know that we've been to Carson Falls on a day like today, though. Compared to the wet, lush, rain forest ambience of hiking Cataract Falls this morning— which is absolutely the best way to enjoy it— our hike to Carson has a completely different vibe. The patchy morning clouds burned off as we drove back a few miles to the trailhead, revealing everything for miles beneath a clear, blue sky. And where the Carson Falls trail climbs straight into a narrow, wet canyon, the trail to Carson Falls begins with a long, gradual ascent over Pine Mountain.



Once we passed the fake taco truck at the trailhead we crested a small rise and could see the rest of Pine Mountain ahead of us. I don't know that we've been here on such a clear day before. Usually it's been overcast, even a bit rainy. The last time we were here it sleeted on us!

Gloomy weather shortens your perspective. You can't see that far off, so you focus on what's around you. Today felt totally different because we could see so much around us and so far ahead. Like that hilltop a mile away in the picture... surely we weren't going to have to hike all the way up that, right? It never felt like we hiked so far before. Alas, yes, that's where we'd have to go. At least it's beautiful and not sleeting today.



The distance views atop Pine Ridge were unexpected and amazing. At first we could only see Pine ahead of us and Tam behind us. As we slowly climbed to the top the views got better and better. Tam remained in the picture (the flattened triangular peak a bit in from the right) and soon we could see the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge crossing the north bay, the towers of downtown Oakland almost 30 miles away, and even the double peak of Mt. Diablo ( bit in from the left) in the hazy distance 50 miles away.



We know the way to Carson Falls. We've stood at unmarked crossroads in the drizzling rain enough in the past to have committed it to memory. It continued to amuse me, though, that while I remembered all the turns I forgot how far the climb up Pine Ridge was. Soon enough, though, it was time to start heading down the other side. We turned from Pine Ridge Road (a blocked-off fire road) to Oatley Ridge Road then met the narrow foot trail down into the canyon for Carson Falls.

This is a steep section leading down to the falls. It was coming up this steep part years ago that it sleeted on us. Ahh, fond memories!



Another thing I don't particular recall from hiking in crummy weather in the past is wildflowers on the trail. There weren't exactly a ton of them out here Sunday, but there were some. Deep in the shade we saw a few of these. They're... purple flowers. I suck at identifying flowers. And I'd look it up, but Google sucks at identifying flowers, too.

Update: I remembered the reason things don't grow well along most of Pine Ridge is the serpentine. There's a lot of serpentine rock in this ridge. It's poisonous to most growing things, so the plants that thrive here are only the hardiest varieties and even they don't grow big.

Update 2: This flower is an iris. I figured that out not by searching on characteristics like "purple flower with 3 and 6 petals" (which I tried, unsuccessfully) but by trying a few guesses of flower names and finding pictures that match. Several small patches of wildflowers grow on a hillside where there's little exposed serpentine (see note above).

Stay tuned, we're almost to the falls!

Carson Falls

This past Sunday, almost a week ago now, we hiked to Carson Falls near Mt. Tamalpais. It was the second hike of an epic, three-hike day. The trek to Carson Falls was the longest trek of the day. Though our morning hike along Cataract Falls was so jam-packed with waterfalls. we covered probably little more than a mile and about 400' of ascent on that trail. Here we'd cover nearly 4 miles roundtrip and over 1,000 feet of gain. And the trek started with unexpectedly good views along Pine Ridge.

This trail is the Carson Falls trail, though, not the Pine Ridge trail. It would still be nice without the falls, but the falls are what make it special.



The first tier of Carson Falls plunges over the side of a narrow canyon in a drop of 20 ~ 25 feet. There's a small rocky ledge opposite the falls that's nice to sit on and enjoy the view.

As we were headed to the rocks to pick a perch, a nature volunteer approached us and asked us if we'd come to see the frogs.

"We're here to see the falls," I said, gesturing to... well, everything visible around us.

"Oh, but do you know about the yellow-legged, shitsicle-licking frog that came in last place in the leaping frog of Calaveras County competition?" the guide asked. ...Okay, he didn't really use all those descriptors for the frog, but that's how annoying he was already coming across with his boisterous insistence on questioning us about frogs.

"We saw the display near the trailhead at the fake taco truck," I responded.

"Oh, the Tam Van!" he corrected me.

"Yeah, the fake taco truck," I insisted. "I was really hoping for a hotdog and an ice cream."

Hawk wandered off somewhere else, apparently not wanting to be part of the "Who can be the biggest jerk?" competition I had engaged the old coot in. The difference between us was that I was doing it on purpose, trolling. The old guy was apparently completely self-unaware how annoying he was.

He was also completely unaware that I was trolling him to shut him down. He kept talking. IDK, maybe everyone lambastes him about the fake taco truck. I suspect more likely he was lonely and my trolling was the longest conversation he'd had with anyone all day.

By the way, there are at least two of these endangered, never-praised-by-Mark-Twain-for-their-jumping-ability frogs in the picture above. I could only spot one with the binoculars the guide lent me. At maybe 4 inches across It's too small to see in the photo as presented here.

After a while I handed the guide back his binoculars and made my way down to the next perch.



The second tier of falls is even more impressive than the first. It's partly because these falls are even taller and partly becuse the viewpoint is better. Here there's a rocky perch near the bottom.

You might notice both these pictures (and the next one, too) are slow exposures because of the motion-blurred water. I did slow exposures of the falls in Cataract Canyon, too. But here I had to employ two tricks with my camera to pull it off that I didn't have to there.

First, here, because there's strong daylight I had to use a darkening filter to slow my camera down to 1/4 second exposures. In the deep shade on the previous hike I could do that without a filter. Here I used my ND6 filters— which block out about 98.5% of the light.

Second, I didn't have my tripod on this hike. A tripod is important when making pictures with slow exposures like 1/4 second because it stabilizes the camera. I left it back in the car on this trek because it's a longer trek and I didn't want to lug it so far. So I was shooting hand-held. For these pictures I braced the camera against my knee or a rock to hold it steady. The technique worked fairly well. Especially at this spot, where there was a big rock in exactly the right place.



An even more awesome thing about this spot than having a big rock in the right place is that it's a two-fer of waterfalls. You can see the second and third tiers of Carson Falls here! You need a really wide lens to capture both in one frame, though. And fortunately I have a really wide lens. And a really big ND6 to screw onto it.

Oh, but wait, there's more. This spot is actually a three-fer. If you have a lens that covers, like, 180° you can see three tiers of falls. My lens isn't that wide. And the pano mode in my iPhone got really confused because it expects panorama pictures to be captured on a level, not a diagonal.

And there are other falls, too. Carson Falls actually has at least 4 main drops, maybe 5. We hiked down to the lower tiers, and I took pictures there, but the views weren't that great. The lower falls are overgrown with trees right now. They showed better when we visited 8 years ago. Of course, that was the trip when it sleeted on us on the hike home!



After visiting all the falls we started our way back up to Pine Ridge for the trek back to the car. It's a few hundred feet up from the lowest falls just to the spot where Hawk is standing at a trail junction in the photo above. From there it's at least another 500 vertical feet to the top of the ridge. Whew, uphill both ways! But the trip was absolutely worth it. In beauty I walk.