Ryan's Chang: Off the beaten path

The slogan for The North Face is "Never stop exploring". This past week I did just that. On Tuesday after some rains for a few days I was itching to explore some waterfalls. I had an feeling that a place near where I live would have some flow.

Kiko joined me on the hike and we made a quick pace from the trail head, I needed to be at work on time. Making our way through a well swathed trail we got to where we needed to be in about an hour. We then rock hopped our way up the stream and hit our first major pool. We saw tiers of waterfalls flowing down the stream which brought a huge smile to my face. With time to spare we decided to continue on to where we thought was too tough for a recon mission. The first major falls we contoured and bushwhacked through some strawberry guava. Up above the first falls we saw another. This one was a little more difficult to negotiate. Kiko only had rubber soled shoes which made the ascent above this falls very dangerous. He said he'd wait here and I would have to continue on without him. He gave me some webbing just in case I needed it. I slowly made my way above this falls and told him I'd only go ten minutes.

As I continued on I passed a rolling waterfalls which was easy to climb and followed the stream bed all the way to a forty foot waterfall spilling into a pool. I stopped and snapped some shots and looked around for a bit. Since no one was with me now I decided to turn around at this point.

You can bet I was ecstatic on finding this gem of a hike that people usually just pass up when it's right under their noses.

After the recon mission I was tickled with the idea of going back so quickly. With few rains left in our forecast the need to do a waterfall hike really wrenched on my brain. A few of my friends were doing waterfall hikes but those were VERY dependent on rain. I thought screw it let's go back now! I called Kiko back and phoned my buddy Matt. Both were down to go see it. Katie also wanted to see what all the fuss was about this past week so she had to go.

We set out a little later that day. It seemed as though the rain was still there. The flow of the stream was way stronger than Tuesday and it got us going. We reached the point where most people usually don't go and I could tell on the look of Matt's and Katie's faces it was a gem of a hike like I mentioned before. We climbed up to the point where I stopped. We figured that going straight up the waterfall even though there was a rope was dangerous. There was a small swath that led up the left side of the falls that we followed. As we climbed up and over the falls just before dropping down to the stream again I looked up and my jaw dropped in utter amazement. What I saw was like a painting Georgia O'Keeffe painted. A thin ribbon of a waterfall high in the mountains flowing down; you can see the steps and tiers of waterfalls flowing down into the stream just above where we were.

We got back down to the stream bed and just above the forty foot waterfall was a pool. We dubbed it "Nature's Infinity Pool". We continued up the stream bed through several more gully type waterfalls. We reached the base of the tall waterfall we saw deep in the mountains and celebrated. Going straight up the waterfall was too dangerous so we contoured as far as we could up the right side of the waterfall. The forest got real dense and we were following a pig trail. The soil was really loose so we decided to save it for another time. We made our way back down and out of the hike.

This hike was really good and unspoiled from what I saw. There was no trash up there so I know that not a lot of people have been up there. Hopefully it will stay that way. Till next time!

Photos provided by: Katie, Matt, and Kiko