Dinkey Creek Falls (1/2)
Aug. 30th, 2023 07:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerSaturday we made it a hiking twofer, first hiking Rancheria Falls then driving a slight off-road adventure to get to the Dinkey Lakes trailhead. Our main objective at Dinkey was not the lakes loop but a small waterfall not far up the trail. We figured we might hike past that to the first lake and back, time permitting.
The trail notes for getting to the falls seemed simple. Walk a bit, ford the creek, then look for "a weird, striated rock surface" on the left and walk across it to the falls. Seems simple, right? But then we saw this...
This was definitely a "weird, striated rock"! It looks like highly weathered wood but it's actually all rock. It's not even petrified wood. It's volcanic. And it was on the left... except it was not across the creek. And walking across the rock would just take us back to the parking lot. So... where to go?
Well, fortunately we could see a waterfall just off the trail, on the right.
I scrambled down the hill to take pictures. Hawk's back was starting to bother her, so she stayed on the main trail.
After taking pictures of the pretty little falls from various angles and shutter speeds (the last pic above shows water motion blur with a 0.2 second exposure) we discussed whether this was the falls in the book— and the book was mistaken not just about distances but about "right" versus "left"— or was a bonus falls the authors of a guidebook for waterfalls forgot to mention. We decided it was more likely the latter. Note, BTW, this guidebook is not Dr. Smedley Q. Boredom's Very Dull Book of Waterfalls, aka "That Dratted Book"; it's by an author who writes well and is generally very accurate.
Were we right in our guess about the book failing to mention these falls? Well, I gave away the answer already in the title. Stay tuned for the other Dinkey Creek falls! 😅
Update: continue reading with Dinkey Falls part 2!
The trail notes for getting to the falls seemed simple. Walk a bit, ford the creek, then look for "a weird, striated rock surface" on the left and walk across it to the falls. Seems simple, right? But then we saw this...
This was definitely a "weird, striated rock"! It looks like highly weathered wood but it's actually all rock. It's not even petrified wood. It's volcanic. And it was on the left... except it was not across the creek. And walking across the rock would just take us back to the parking lot. So... where to go?
Well, fortunately we could see a waterfall just off the trail, on the right.
I scrambled down the hill to take pictures. Hawk's back was starting to bother her, so she stayed on the main trail.
After taking pictures of the pretty little falls from various angles and shutter speeds (the last pic above shows water motion blur with a 0.2 second exposure) we discussed whether this was the falls in the book— and the book was mistaken not just about distances but about "right" versus "left"— or was a bonus falls the authors of a guidebook for waterfalls forgot to mention. We decided it was more likely the latter. Note, BTW, this guidebook is not Dr. Smedley Q. Boredom's Very Dull Book of Waterfalls, aka "That Dratted Book"; it's by an author who writes well and is generally very accurate.
Were we right in our guess about the book failing to mention these falls? Well, I gave away the answer already in the title. Stay tuned for the other Dinkey Creek falls! 😅
Update: continue reading with Dinkey Falls part 2!
