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.
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.