06/25/2011 - Barker Valley with Nick (revisited)

Hello All,

   My nephew Nick & I went back to Barker Valley to find the falls.  Check out my blog entry for May 14 2011 for a reminder of the valley.   We made it a mission on our prior visit to find the waterfalls.  They eluded us the prior visit but it was not going to be a replay this time.  The photos below are where the photos from May 14th left off.

   We did find the falls.  And Wow did we find the waterfalls!  What a beautiful piece of rock sculpture!  Without going into details to mimic 05/14 I'll say it was a much hotter day today and there were only 4 people (2 vehicles) in the valley.  We saw only 1 truck in the pull out at the top of the trailhead, and the backpackers from that truck were only about 10 minutes ahead of us on the trail (we saw them as we pulled up to the trailhead).  We took our time putting on the sunblock and hiking gear to give the other hikers some distance in front of us, and it really was a hot day.  Going up the mountain and back down again we saw not a single other vehicle on the 8 mile dirt divide road.

   Once making it down into the valley, passing the other hikers along the way, we got down to the meadow and stopped for a couple pieces of fruit, and to feed the mosquitos.  They were fierce.  I still have bites.  After the short rest we took our old path again along the stream and finally passed the point of our previous visit.  One half hour my butt!  Other people, and hiking books, said the stone weir was about 1/2 hour from the meadow.  Really it was more like a full hour.  And in the month since we've been there previously there has been a trememdous amount of shrub and overgrowth.  The path was more primitive, if it was at all possible.  But when we got to the stone weir it really was a sweet little place.  Peaceful.  The stream pressing over the man-made block dam at the weir leaving nice little clear pools on both sides.  We thought we found the falls here at the weir... the weir did create a 3' fall and it was idyllic there.  It was about 6:00pm and my nephew asked if we should look a little further to find the 2nd set of falls.  We decided to give it about 15 minutes before it would be time to turn around and make it back up the trail to the trailhead another 4 miles away. 
  
   It only took a couple minutes when the idyllic little pond & stream area broke away into a rock canyon wilderness.  Vast, amazingly large.  It is a shame the pictures don't really show the large high walls of the canyon.  The stream still flowed through but it flowed through the split canyon and the thousands of years of water has created scary-smooth granite boulders.  I was wearing sneakers and it still felt like I had oil on the bottom of my shoes, and that was on the dry rocks!   Well, crazy as we are, we still had to go into the canyon, monkey crawling across some rocks, sliding down other rocks with the cliff still below us (sorry Robin, you didn't need to know Nick has the crazy adventurous gene that I have). 
   Anyway, the waterfall at the weir... that wasn't a waterfall at all.  The waterfalls were in the rock canyon.  Huge 20' & 50' waterfalls flowing through the broken canyon.  Nice swimming pools all around, and in the bottom level of the tri-falls there were the other 2 hikers in the canyon sharing a dip in the pool.  I think they were smart, by looking at their tracks they waded through the ponds instead of doing as Nick & I did crawling over the smooth rocks.  That 15 minutes we were going to give ourselves turned into 45 minutes.  We still managed to make it back up and to the trailhead before full darkness hit.

   Enjoy the pictures of the Barker Falls.  It would be nice to go back with backpacking gear and staying the night tenting in one of the meadows to enjoy an entire weekend in the rock canyon.  Something to add to my bucket list.