Access returning to waterfall spectacular
A back-door route to one of the prettiest sites in Northern California — the Berry Creek Canyon and its three drop-dead beautiful waterfalls — reopened last week in Big Basin Redwoods State Park. This is just in time for hikers to see the waterfalls while the falls are still charged from winter rains.
In addition, two more-traditional and shorter routes to the falls will probably open in time for Memorial Day weekend, and perhaps sooner, according to park staff at Big Basin Redwoods and its coastal outpost, Rancho del Oso.
After several months, trail crews finished clearing the Sunset Trail this past week, trail supervisor Chris Pereira reported. From park headquarters, the Sunset Trail provides a route through the park’s most remote regions to the top of the Berry Creek Canyon. From there, you can turn left and drop down on the trail that leads past the falls — in turn from top to bottom, the Golden Cascade, Silver Falls and Berry Creek Falls.
Several other trails are still closed in the park. That means you have to return via the same route, not a loop, which makes it a round trip of 12.6 miles, out and back from headquarters. Including the drive, that is an ambitious day for most.
In February, drenching rains and pounding winds toppled more than 50 trees across the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail, the 4.7-mile route to Berry Creek Falls. The damage included a 400-yard section plundered by a landslide that tossed oldgrowth redwoods in a heap, ranger Alex Tabone said. The Sunset Trail (and others in the park) was also closed then by damage. At the same time, an alternate route to Berry Creek Falls from Rancho del Oso on the coast, the bike-and-hike along Waddell Creek, was impassable from high water at a stream crossing.
Big Basin Redwoods is near Boulder Creek in the Santa Cruz Mountains and has received more than 90 inches of rain this season, according to park staff. Other gauges in the region have measured 76 to 87 inches, according to the Santa Cruz Water Department. That level of rainfall has saturated aquifers, has springs pumping and recharged the waterfalls in Berry Creek Canyon.
For many, the centerpiece is Berry Creek Falls, the landmark 70-foot waterfall framed in a redwood canyon. Crews built a new viewing deck near the plunge pool. There’s something timeless there, whether you visited 50 years ago or last week.
Upstream, a little over a half mile, is Silver Falls, a gorgeous free-fall. A rock staircase leads up the right side to the brink, where from a cable rail you can reach out and touch the water. It’s magic to feel the cold water hit your fingers.
The brink of Silver Falls connects upstream to the lower span of the Golden Cascade, a series of slides, chutes and falls in which clear water flows over golden sandstone. There’s a spot there that is one of my favorite places in the world, where all the senses can feel as though they spark to life.
In the next two weeks, the next route to Berry Creek Falls to open will probably be the bike-and-hike out of Rancho del Oso, interpretive specialist
Jeremy Linn said. Crews from the California Conservation Corps will arrive in the coming week, he said, with a mission to install the bridges and reopen the westernmost leg of the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail to Berry Creek Falls. On this route from Highway 1, you ride 6 miles, including three hills that will get you puffing, to a set of bike racks. You then lock up and walk a half mile to Berry Creek Falls.
There is no date for the reopening of the primary route, the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail out of park headquarters, but with crews on it full time, it seems likely by Memorial Day weekend.
Salmon delivery: Only 5 percent of juvenile salmon survive the swim from their nursery grounds on the Upper Sacramento River and tributaries through the delta, bay and to the ocean, according to scientists. In Half Moon Bay, the Coastside Fishing Club has eased the trip.
The Coastsiders, as many call the club, took delivery of 240,000 salmon smolts last week, when they were poured from the hatchery truck by chute into an acclimation pen. The fish will then grow out in submerged cages in the harbor for later release. The Coastsiders will receive another 240,000 Wednesday and then again on May 24, at the end of Johnson Pier at Pillar Point Harbor.
The survival of the smolts and success of the rearing program is the best in California and has helped get more salmon into the ocean, instead of baby fish getting sucked down water pumps. Cautionary tales: You wonder whether the stories of three of my friends are just tales of bad luck, or perhaps something else. These three, who don’t know each other, have traveled across Central America, South America and Africa on many adventures. All three have world-class credentials. When they returned to the United States, each fell victim to an illness that doctors could not decipher, other than calling them likely bacteria-based infections, perhaps introduced by insect bites or parasites.
One of my friends went blind, another is in a wheelchair and underwent neurological testing last week with still no answers, and the third was put in intensive care last week while on a trip in South Africa.
That got me thinking, to remember the grade school lesson, how Europeans came to the Western Hemisphere and introduced diseases to the native people that their immune systems could not defend. Could the same thing be happening here? Letter of the week: “Last week we ran into an old friend who related that on a recent morning near the Cliff House (San Francisco), he was sure that he saw a bald eagle soaring above the cliffs. Then last Thursday afternoon, my wife and I were taking the Coastal Trail from Sutro’s to China Beach, when we saw what we thought were two red-tailed hawks soaring above the cliffs (two often roost in the trees in Sutro Park), but they were much larger, and one was sporting a white head and tail. The second bird was either a mate, or perhaps a sibling who had not yet fully developed his white markings.
“As we sat in awe, a young woman came walking in the opposite direction, and I said, ‘Look, a bald eagle!’ She calmly kept walking without looking up and stated in return, ‘I’m from Washington, D.C., and to me they are like pigeons.’ What we have here is a walk in nature, a sighting of something wonderful, and then an interaction with what must have been a pol from our capital with her mind on another gold-crested bird of prey.” — Bill Sorensen.