TAHOE NATIONAL FOREST: Braving Obstacles, Overcoming Hazards, and Eluding Death in Search of Unnamed Waterfalls in Untamed Big Granite Creek Basin

Picaresque exaggeration? A lionizing “I cheated death” tale? Perhaps somewhat, but truthfully, the raw power of Mother Nature on display in the Big Granite Creek basin / wilderness in Tahoe National Forest was humbling, if not frightening. One simple slip

This relatively small speck of earth on the Tahoe National Forest service map -- itself relatively small speck on a map of California -- could easily qualify as the most spectacularly beautiful and rugged creek shed -- as well as the least explored and least accessible -- in the Western Sierra Nevada mountains. The upper (and lower) reaches of this largely unknown creek -- whose basin / headwaters are located only a few crow-fly miles west of Lake Tahoe and below Donner summit on Interstate 80 -- is not a place many, if any, dare to tread. If you did, especially at this time of year , when snow fields present an introductory first mile or two of tough terrain at 5000 to 6700 feet altitude, you’d better have excellent route-finding skills, superb map-reading abilities, possibly a GPS unit, or be lucky en

That was my ticket! An invitation from friend and de facto guide, Russell Towle. As Russell related in his narrative essay, “Adventure in Big Granite Canyon”, “When it's time to visit the really wild places, I call Tom McGuire and beg him to make the drive, up, up and away from Berkeley, away from his beautiful wife Mary, and towards the North Fork, and Danger, Uncertainty, Difficulty.”
Russell has been itching and scheming for just such an expedition for well nigh over twenty years. Towle is to local Western Sierra Nevada foothills geology, history, botany and l

Russell’s explored everywhere, so he had been in the upper basin, but never managed to negotiate the additional thousand feet or so of hard going down to the untamed and as yet unnamed falls. It was not a day-trip. A minimum of two days was called for. (“We’re not twenty year olds any m


A flurry of excited e-mails ensues. Russell (re)assures me, “I have explored this whole area and hiked in Big Granite (upper part) several times. I have complete confidence, no doubt whatsoever, in our ability to get in there and back out unscathed.” Naturally, I accept the invitation -- more like the challenge -- to accompany him. It would be a magnificent traverse, a four-mile walk in the park, I imagined, taking us first through high country reminiscent of


If this untouched place (not quite!) were accessible, it would be a National

But for all intents and purposes, the Big Granite Creek Waterfalls Extravaganza is an off-limits paradise, a preternatural world so utterly inaccessible and remote that it might as well be a lost wilderness in Alaska or Patagonia. People simply do not very often, if ever, get down into -- or up into from the North Fork - these reaches of Big Granite Creek. There are no trails, except, of course, for those made by bears. No evidence of human activity, except, of course, for the scarred remnants in Section 15 of the 1991 clear-cutting disaster. Russell and I wondered f anyone since then had been where we camped (at the top of the first of three eye-poppers). I’m convinced probably not even the Tahoe National Forest rangers themselves have seen or are even aware of these tremendous waterfall

We exited I-80 at Kingvale and drove along a frontage road heading back west for a mile or so, then turned down a gravel jeep road that crossed the railroad tracks and eventually dead-ended at a snow bank in the middle of nowhere. We organized our gear -- I was going in light, with just a day pack and my

And so off we set into the wild known / unknown. At first it was fun going, we were full of steam and childlike enthusiasm, adrenaline fueling our every step of the way. The early morning snow banks had yet to soften, firm enough to make the going pretty easy. (Coming back, later in the day, it was a grueling, different story!) In no time, we ascended the crest at Nancy Lake, situated at 6700‘, right on the Yuba / American divide, then made our way down the south-bearing slope of a sun-blasted granite dome. Superb views of Devil’s Peak (7704’) and spurs of the

We lost the snow, passing from the granite boulder / talus scene into a gentler territory of thick conifer forest and semi-frozen lakes. We skirted immense boulder fields, hopped over lovely Sierra streams, admired rugged landscapes atop apartment-sized granite boulders, and finally took a well-deserved lunch break at Natalie Lake where two lovely Western Tanagers romanced and entertained. It seemed like a hop, skip and a jump to get t

A couple of hours of tough bushwhacking later, Russell sniffed the air and turned with triumphant arms raised -- we were at the waterfall. . .or, as we soon found out, we were at the first of three successive plunges of Big Granite Creek through the fabled gorge. Russell describes our approach: “The world ended, for just one thing. Some kind of monstrous cliff lay dead ahead. Beside us, Big Granite Creek raged though a broad channel hewn from the solid slate of the Sailor Canyon Formation. Quite suddenly it was a Force, and rather scary. It was just screaming down the

We scouted out a camping spot -- slim pickings on the rocky, uneven ground -- and then turned our undivided attention to this bonanza of scenic wonders. The first waterfall spilled over a broad rocky lip, perhaps thirty maybe fifty feet across, and split into three thundering plunges of at least two and hundred and fifty feet to a wide, polished granite bed below; then five hundred horizontal feet later the second of the falls drops

Of course, the middle and lower falls could best be seen from below, so to truly appreciate their tremendous power, we had to scramble down something like five-hundred additional feet of obstinate terrain. (And then back up.) But oh, was it worth it. From higher up we could see maybe a third of an east-facing narrow Kauai-like ribbon of a cascade, just pouring down the opposite cliff face in a Fantasy Island-like series of falls and pools, perhaps an eight-hundred footer, all told! (Although Russell soberly deemed this one a “mere” six-hundred feet tall.)

From where we now stood -- near the base of the lower falls -- we were able to take in the grandeur of the entire spectacle. “We descended a short steep cliff to a sunny broad ledge, maybe thirty feet below the top of the falls,” Russell wrote. “It was all thunder and confusion and white water flinging free into the wild wild world, and cold spray wetting us. Amazing. Huge. Awesome.”
After a restless night of sleep -- wish I had my ground pad! - during which it got surprisingly chilly -- we awoke at 5 a.m. and built a driftwood fire to heat up water for instant coffee before setting off to explore the nearby cliffs and return to the lower falls area again. No way was I going to pass on witnessing them a second, maybe final

Sun-dappled patches of light began to gradually signal the impending heat of the day; finally, a brilliant sun breached the high ridge and showered us in warm rays.
We had to ford the stream, since the only way down was on the opposite side of the creek from where we had camped. Russell was leery from the get-go: “There was quite a nasty tug as one crossed the deepest area, slightly over knee deep, and I felt the current literally slide me inches towards the falls; but one more step led to shallower water, and safety. I breathed a sigh of relief; Tom had had no trouble at all, it seemed, so it was just my nerves. Or was that ford more dangerous than I had imagined?”
We passed a couple of hours exploring about, looking for fossilized z

Knowing it was time to get a move on, we made our separate ways back to the


We packed it up and began the long slog out of the basin. We had two-thousand or more feet of elevation to pick up, and four or more miles of trekking. We scaled and trudged and crissed and crossed the landscape, overshot trajectories, and fought the thickets. The going got rough and the rough got worn-out, fast. Coming back down the Yuba side of the divide, below Nancy Lake, through big snow, turned out to be the hardest part of the return hike. But we made it, one step at a time, and were none worse the wear, all in all, from my billy-goat eternally youthful perspective. Russell, of course, had the last word on this: “Tom and I suffered to visit thesefalls; I am still very sore, a day later. But, oh wow, oh my God, they are things of great wonder and beauty and power!”