Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

When we hiked at Bassi Falls last weekend of course we also climbed to the top of the falls! A trip to Bassi Falls isn't complete without hoofing it up through the forest to the edge of the granite ridge, then scrambling up the bare slickrock. The views at the top make it all worth it.



I've sticked together this video, just under 2 minutes, from a few short clips I recorded from different vantage points atop the falls.

This past Saturday morning we headed up to Bassi Falls up in the Sierra Nevada. The drive was pleasantly short at about 60 miles. We knocked out the majority of the driving from home with our “Friday Night Halfway” to Folsom.

While Bassi Falls was the main event for the day, getting there was part of the fun. The journey is part of the adventure. This journey included three fun things: US 50, a waterfall (yes, a waterfall on the way to see a waterfall!), and 4x4 driving.

US 50: Far from the Loneliest Road

Most of our driving Saturday morning was on US 50. It's dubbed "The Loneliest Road" for its path through the middle of nowhere in the Great Basin desert of Nevada. Having driven across Nevada four times now I can attest that it's a very lonely road. Here in California, though, it's anything but lonely. Crowded is more like it.

Our journey on US 50 actually began Friday evening, when we exited from eastbound Interstate 80 onto US 50 in West Sacramento. That's where US 50 begins— or ends, depending on which end you're starting from. That other end, by the way, is Ocean City, Maryland, a whopping 3,073 miles away. (Interesting note: this isn't even the longest road in the US. Four others are longer!)

Thankfully traffic on US 50 Saturday morning wasn't too bad. By leaving Folsom before 9am we managed to get out ahead of the road-clogging people driving motor homes and towing boats over the mountain pass to Lake Tahoe. It helped, too, that almost all of the route up to our turnoff at Icehouse Road has at least 2 lanes in each direction— so there's no getting stuck single file behind a slow moving vehicle.

A Waterfall on the Way to a Waterfall!

While getting stuck behind a slow moving vehicle on mountain roads is no fun, there are things you'll miss if you go too fast. One of those things is Bridalveil Falls. It's tucked in a blind corner on the side of the road, and the one small road sign announcing it's ahead doesn't give you enough warning to slow down and be prepared to pull off. I imagine most people zoom past it least twice, saying "Wow! What was that waterfall?" before making a plan to stop and visit it.

This trip, like our last one 6 weeks ago, I drove at a gentle pace through this stretch of the mountain pass. I watched for that small brown sign. As soon as I saw it I eased off the throttle and began signalling a turn so everyone trying to rush up the mountain could go around me instead of impatiently riding my tail.

When we pulled off we had the spot to ourselves for a while. Indeed, the road was pretty busy, but almost everyone was passing by these falls, seeing them too late to stop. I took advantage of the quiet to set up my tripod to take some timed exposures and a picture with the two of us in it. It didn't turn out so well... We were squinting in the bright morning sun, so I'm not including it here. But it was still closer to a keeper than almost any picture I get when I hand my camera to a rando to take a picture of us, which is why I carry the tripod and take the time to set it up when reasonable.

I note the water flow is much lower here than six weeks earlier.

Back on the road it wasn't much further until we reached our turnoff at Icehouse Road. From there we ascend steeply into the Sierra Nevada, heading toward the Crystal Basin.

A Bit of 4x4 Driving

Icehouse Road is paved all the way and in good shape, even if it is steep and winding in parts. From Icehouse we turn onto a dirt road for the last 2 miles to the Bassi Falls upper trailhead. Yes, upper trailhead. There are actually at least 3 trailheads it's reasonable to hike Bassi Falls from. We usually do the upper trailhead because it's the closest to the falls, leaving us more time and energy to spend at the falls. The upper trailhead isn't for everybody, though. You need a 4x4 to get there.



The dirt road is actually pretty easy for the first 1.8 miles or so. Then there's a hill climb that's slightly rough. That filters out the passenger cars. Then right near the end there's a tougher hill climb, with "tank trap" ruts. The video above shows us going over it.

You'll see I actually had to try it twice— the first time with 4-hi and choosing a tougher line I got stuck. I backed up, engaged 4-lo and my rear locker, and walked it.

This obstacle was tougher this Saturday than 6 weeks earlier. It looks like vehicle traffic in the intervening time with dry weather has dug the ruts deeper. But there's a plus to the road getting tougher: fewer people make it to the trailhead! We had the trailhead all to ourselves on Saturday morning.

Last night we drove to Folsom, California, halfway to Bassi Falls. Yes, that's the same as we did 6 weeks ago. We're doing it again! Why? Because six weeks ago we had to bail out early when Hawk got hurt. Plus, Bassi Falls is beautiful. It doesn't hurt to see it twice. And we'll finish the rest of the trip, with a few other hikes, we intended to do 6 weeks ago.

How much the same is it? Well, we started from the same place (we live there, duh), we're going to the same trailhead to start the day Saturday, and Friday night we stayed at the same hotel— almost. Instead of the Residence Inn we're at the Courtyard. They're both Marriotts and they're literally next to each other in the parking lot.



The drive out to Folsom Friday night wasn't bad. Driving 142 miles took us 3:15 including a stop for dinner of about 45 minutes. Oh, and speaking of the same trip as 6 weeks ago... we ate dinner at the same restaurant as last time. 😂 Though this time we left home 10-15 minutes later and made better time driving. We lost only 15-20 minutes to traffic. Thus we arrived 15 minutes earlier than last time.

You'll note driving 142 miles last night, with 202 shown as the total distance in the map above, is more than halfway. Yeah, that's because "Woooooah, we're halfway there!" is lyrical and "Wooooah we're 70.3% rounded up of the way there!" is not.

But back to things that are the same, or not. Last night after checking in we considered going to the same ice cream shop as last time. It was good! But this time I didn't quite feel like having ice cream; I wanted a beer or cocktail instead. Well, right next door to the Courtyard is a BevMo! It's, like, 50 feet from the hotel's side entrance. I grabbed a couple large cans of Negra Modelo (one for Friday night, one for Saturday) and took them back to the room to relax.

Final difference: we're getting an earlier leave on things this morning. We rolled from the hotel just after 7:30am and are now eating breakfast nearby— at the same restaurant (Del Taco) as last time! I hope that leaves us enough time to enjoy lots of outdoors stuff today. Of course, we'll have to avoid injuries while at it!

Saturday we hiked to Bassi Falls. Yeah, we got a later start than we intended (previous blog) but that would be okay. There's plenty of daylight this time of year. We'd be able to enjoy the falls for a while and then try a few other short hikes in the area. And after it all we're not even going all the way home. We're following up last night's Friday Night Halfway with Saturday Night Halfway. Better yet we're not going halfway home; we're going halfway to our next adventure!

But let me not get ahead of myself. We're still on this adventure. And Bassi Falls is always a fun little adventure.



I say "little" adventure because the trail we took is short. It's a bit over 1/2 mile each way. It starts out in forest cover amid towering firs. After cresting a slight rise then dropping down the other side the trail breaks out onto granite slickrock (photo above). This is where it goes from pleasant to fun. Being on bare rock like this is our happy place.

From here, BTW, we could hear the falls before we could see them. They're quite full right now with spring snowmelt after a record setting winter snow season. Their roar filled the canyon.



Soon enough the falls came into view. We could see even from a distance that there are a lot of people here today. Of course, we could tell from the number of cars parked along various spots on the road that there'd be a crowd. People were sunning themselves on rocks while kids and dogs splashed around in the swift moving shallows.



Despite the crowd there's plenty of Bassi Falls to go around, especially in a high-flow year such as this. We crossed through part of the stream below the falls, getting our feet wet though we didn't care, and found an area without so many people at it. Here were lingered for a bit, enjoying the view.



I also took some long exposure pictures with a darkening filter and my tripod. With the crushing flow of water right now the effect isn't as powerful as when we were here a few years ago in a dry year. But still it's an interesting effect as it captures the clouds of spray creating by the churning falls.

At the top I described Bassi Falls as an adventure. Though the falls are lovely it's not quite an adventure if all you do is walk to the falls, enjoy their beauty, and walk back. That's totally still In Beauty I Walk but not so much adventure. Well, the adventure comes from climbing that granite ridge to get to the top of the falls. That's where we're going next. Stay tuned!

Keep reading: the view from atop Bassi Falls— and D'oh!

The past few weekends have been taking-it-easy, stay-mostly-around-home weekends. Taking it easy has been nice, especially after 6 weeks of heavy travel, but relaxing gets dull after a while. I like to go places and do things!

What to do this weekend has been on my mind for a while. By Friday I'll have been home for nearly 3 weeks, and this one's a three-day weekend with the Juneteenth holiday on Monday. It's time for us to get out again.

Alas we didn't try to plan anything for this weekend until a few days ago. Late planning means many of the things we thought of doing, like visiting Yosemite to see the lush waterfalls after this record rain season, are all booked up. For a bit it looked like we'd be closed out of all the cool stuff and would have to spend the weekend based at home, hopefully getting out Sat-Sun-Mon to do hiking in the area. But then last night I had a better idea: Bassi Falls!



At first I was dismissive of my own idea. "We've been there a lot," I thought. But then I considered that last time we were there the falls was dry. The photo above showing the falls flush with water is from our first visit, in 2017. Unlike our more recent visit it should be bursting with water again after this year's rains. And even that "more recent" visit was 2 years ago. So it's definitely time to go again! I'm looking forward to it beating the hell out of hiking locally.

Eldorado National Forest, California
Friday, 16 Jul 2021. 3pm.

When we visit Bassi Falls we try to spend some time above the falls as well as below it. In my previous blog I shared notes and pictures from below the falls... and, well, partly up it, which I was able to climb this time because the water flow is so low in this record-setting drought year. The flow was so low that a few spry kids actually climbed all the way up the boulders to the top of the falls. I didn't feel like replicating their rock-scrambling— especially not with the weight of my nice camera, lens, and tripod in my pack. Hawk and I instead scrambled up the ridge following a route around to the left side that was just slightly less vertiginous.

The route we took to the top of the waterfall is one that works even in heavy flow years. Still, it's a scramble. The reason I don't have pictures is that I was too busy holding on to the rocks or helping Hawk up to pull out my camera. But once I got near the top where the route starts to level off a bit I spotted opportunities that are revealed only during this abnormally dry year. Near the top of the falls a few small swimming holes were exposed. Normally these are hidden beneath a crushing torrent of water; but this summer, they're tranquil little oases.

For the first two pictures in this blog (and the last one in my previous blog) I used the camera tripod I lugged along in my daypack. There were times during the hike when I questioned my decision to bring along its weight and bulk. Being able to shoot these satiny falls pictures requires stabilizing the camera during exposures of 1/10 up to 1/4 second. The camera isn't moving, the rocks aren't moving, but the water is: thus it's an isolated motion blur.

Another big of camera gear that's crucial to capturing this kind of picture is a neutral density (ND) filter. Shooting long exposures means a lot of light enters the lens. Lenses have built-in diaphragms, measured in units called F-stops, that can be "stopped down" to allow less and less light to pass. Typically a lens's narrowest opening is f/22. Even that lets in too much light on bright sunny California days like today. Plus, narrowing the diaphragm past a certain point induces an effect called diffraction that (among other things) makes pictures look out of focus. F/22 is already at the point of diffraction— and it's still not dark enough! Enter the ND filter.

An ND filter is a piece of glass that darkens the light passing through. ND filters are categorized by how many "stops" on the lens diaphragm they replace. A common type is a 3-stop filter. It transmits just 1/8 (1/2^3) of the light. That means a picture you'd otherwise have to stop down to f/22 to take you can take at f/8, which is at the edge of most lenses' "sweet spot" of image quality. (The difference between f/22 and f/8 is 3 stops. Yeah, the math is weird because those f-numbers work on a times-the-square-root-of-2 basis.)

Good filters are pricey because quality materials are necessary to provide the desired effect evenly across the screen and avoid unwanted effects— most notably a color tint. The "neutral" part of ND means color-neutral. That's the goal, anyway. Buy a cheap filter and YMMV. The filter I'm using this trip is extra-pricey because in addition to having high quality glass it's also adjustable. I can turn a dial to increase the light filtering from 2 stops (transmits 25% of the light) to 5 stops (transmits just 1/32 the light). In the past I've used good filters that were fixed at 3 stops. With full California sun at midday I needed the extra 2 stops of adjustable range this filter offers.

Update: More pictures ahead in part 3!