Ebb and flow

Of all the hikes during the years there is one I look forward to most.  Once the rains come Alice and I plan our trip to the Waterfall Trail at Uvas Canyon County park near Morgan Hill.

It is not a long hike or particularly strenuous.  But in it's short troop is walk along a series of cascading waterfalls as Uvas Creek winds beside the trail.  Rocks, boulders and fallen trees provide ample place for the water to divert and cascade down into foaming pools.

Arriving at the park we were greeted with one of the largest crowds gathered i have seen for a hike.  But as we started Alice and I lost the cord in the tangle of fallen trees and brush and moss covered rocks.  We spent just over four hours on the trail stopping at different pools or falls as we worked our way along the trail.  There was no real plan just whatever caught our eye in the water.

Time exposures help capture the movement and flow of the water so I packed heavy with my Induro tripod with bullhead, electronic cable release and four lenses.  In the four hours I shot just 380 pictures but composing the shots and the time exposures took quite some time.

I played with the shutter speed quite a bit, the slower the better to capture the power and movement of the water's course.  Sometimes I increased the shutter speed to stop some of the water's motion but rarely went above 1/30 of a second.  My usual shutter speeds were one second or a half second.  A low ISO sensitivity setting of a 100 for most of time let me keep a slow speed with a small aperture setting.

I weeded down my shoot to about 100 shots and from there I picked just over 70 to process.  Some shots are the same scene tat different shutter speeds which gives a completely different look and color to the image.

If we have tome I would like to try for a visit to the falls of Mount Tamalpais.  They have a different feel there and we missed our visit last year.  But if not i will wait another year for the rains to return and plan my trip to class and their special beauty.

Things with wings

I grabbed a couple of pictures of two very different flyers enjoying the valley winds.

On my Sunday hike I was surprised to see a glider being towed to altitude and release  just overhead of me on the return leg of my hike.  Morgan Territory sits at 2,000 feet so I figure the glider was right around 3,000 to 3,500 feet.  it was so quiet on the trail I swear I could hear the wind whistle off his wings as he banked beneath the gathering clouds.

Waiting for a group of golfers to reach the green at Old River Golf Course I spotted a slender bird, which I am being told is an egret wheel around the sky above me.  Usually thing with wings duck for cover whenever I have a camera in my hand but the last two days I guess I have been lucky.

The rainy season

All week long as the rains fell I knew the next few hikes would be my typical winter scene.  As the rains fall the trail grows thick with mud and the dry creeks slowly fill with the runoff.  I headed back to take a a spring time view of the winter-like conditions on the trail.

I headed out for a solo trip along making the Coyote Trail to Volvon loop.  It's about 5 miles but the rains would make it an interesting trip.  The same dry and dusty trail I crossed in January's mid-winter season was now replaced with the rain-slicked muddy trail of spring.

It wasn't cold, hiking under the clear sky with a strong breeze but the signs of the recent rains were all around me.  Pools of water lie on the trail shimmering in the wind.  A layer of mud covered the trail and tugged at my hiking boots with each step.  The muddy months had finally come to the trails.

The creek that runs beside Coyote Trail now had water coursing through.  The water was a light brown-almost the shade of coffee with cream as it carried mud from the rain runoff down the creek bed.  Shafts of sunlight lit the water as it tumbled over branches and rocks in the creek bed.  Reflections of the thick canopy of trees reflected in the water ripples.  It was almost eerie in that stretch of the trail, shaded and quiet except for the sounds of the water tumbling along.

Out on the grasslands of Volvon Trail the rain runoff had left the dirt hiking trail a thick muddy mess.  I hiked along the grass edge as much as I could to avoid the bulk of the mud.  Standing water pooled on the edges of the trail as the rain's arrival finally dampened the dry trail.

The rains are predicted to continue through the week as snow accumulates in the mountains.  This bodes well for a trip to Uvas Canyon and the waterfalls trail there.  Mount Tamalpais' Cataract Falls and even Mount Diablo's Donner Falls may even have good life in their falls soon.

In any event the rains are welcome news and cause to celebrate even if they make for muddy footing on the trail.