Walk About Martinez -- Waterfalls

A light rain was falling as Nancy and I set out from the end of Regency Drive in Clayton to hike the Waterfall Trail on Mount Diablo’s North Peak.  The top of the mountain was shrouded in mist, and wisps of cloud dotted the lower slopes.  Drifting in and out of canyons and recesses they hovered expectantly, waiting for a wind to give them lift and take them somewhere, anywhere.  But it wasn’t that kind of storm and they settled in quietly and the rain just filtered slowly down as we began to squish our way up muddy Donner Canyon Road. 

The dirt path ran with a small brown rivulet coursing through a maze of muddy foot prints.  We weren’t the only ones silly enough to hike this trail in the rain.  People had left their mark on the landscape as usual.  Chanterelle mushrooms peaking out from under fallen leaves were a sure sign that the rain had saturated the ground.  After nearly two months of dry winter weather the young grass had begun to show signs of life again.  We were hoping there might be enough runoff for a first glimpse of the waterfalls. 

North Peak is a craggy piece of mountain.  At 3,557 feet, it’s not quite so high as the Summit, which sits above an expanse of gradually climbing hills, but instead, rises sharply from Donner Canyon as a steep wall of rock.  Cut across its face are deep clefts that in the right wet conditions are the source of numerous waterfalls.

The only time to see them is when it’s raining or at the tail end of a big storm, or even better, when the mountain is covered in snow and the sun hits it a day later and all that snow fills the streams.  The steepest trail on the mountain is the last hundred yards of road up to the top of North Peak, several thousand feet above us in cloud.

My hiking companion Nancy is a lover of the long trail, having thru hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, Mexico to Canada, in 2009, the year before I followed the same path.  She hiked the Arizona trail last year and was looking for more inclement weather training before hitting the Rockies this year.  She had driven down from her home in the Foothills above Sacramento to slip slide her way up Diablo on this rainy day.  Several others who had considered coming with us decided to opt for discretion and hike another day.  Not a bad plan either, but it was wonderful to have another person as crazy as me, happy to be out in the mists and beauty of a rainy mountain. 

I love to hike in the rain and I’ll use any excuse to get out my trekking umbrella and strap it up tight under my pack’s chest strap.  Synched up like that my hands are free and I can still use my hiking poles, a necessity on a steep, muddy trail.  I can even shoot pictures while the rain comes down.  On a windless day the umbrella keeps my upper torso dry enough that I can walk with my raincoat open, allowing perspiration to evaporate without getting my clothes wet and clammy, and it keeps my day pack dry as well. 

The hardest part of hiking the waterfalls is not the Waterfall Trail itself, but the several miles of sticky clay soil you have to clomp across to get to it.  We got taller as we walked and our shoes got heavier.  I hike with my shoes loosely tied as I don’t get blisters this way, but when the mud got too thick and heavy and I tried to kick it off it wasn’t just the mud that went flying.  I was suddenly standing shoeless in a dripping sock.  I needed to hop into the grass to retrieve my mud caked shoe.  All par for the weather.

When the trail began to rise we left the mud and by the time we branched onto the Cardinet Oaks Trail, we were hiking mostly on rock and gravel, steeply up the face of North Peak.  Umbrella up and our vision obscured, we walked right past our turnoff onto the Waterfall Trail, so we backtracked and joined it, striking out across the long traverse of the canyons carved into North Peak. 

After a week and a half of good storms, the runoff was still relatively small.  That’s how dry this winter has been.  But the watery ribbons of white and tan were beautiful, almost dainty, so delicately but inexorably cutting paths down the steep ravines.  Finely, exquisitely, every trickle etches the face of a mountain over the eons.  This simple, wet medium gives teeth to gravity and enough power to eventually wear down any massif on the planet.

In a land marked by its arid seasons, the sight of flowing water on our mountain is exciting, and the sound of its splash, a special music.  Every gorge we entered rang with the life giving sound of water.

Our umbrellas came down as the rain turned to a light mist and we jumped creeks and scrambled up and down great rocky outcroppings in search of the best cascade views.  I hope I never forget the joy of playing like a child.  I guess that’s part of the draw of hiking on a rainy day.  Splashing in puddles was a special joy as a little guy.  We made dams in the gutters and felt like we were engineers changing the course of great rivers.  Whole summers were spent playing in the Walnut and Pacheco Creeks, before they were tamed by levees.  Fishing from scrap wood rafts we caught blue gill on the lake, now long gone, filled in and paved over as the Solano Drive-in.  Just up from that on Solano Avenue were marshes and a flooded willow forest where we jumped from trunk to trunk trying to stay dry, but never succeeding, becoming wonderfully lost for hours.

Nancy and I hiked on, coming upon one waterfall after another.  Sometimes several were visible in a short section of canyon.  Wet rocks glistened and the manzanita bark shone with a scarlet brilliance.  A week of rain had revived moss and liverworts and bright orange lichens, and the color of everything clinging to the rocky cliffs was a shade beyond its usual dusty, muted tone.  Still the clouds drifted slowly or sat motionless against the hills and the soft mist seemed a final life sustaining beneficence from the storm.  The peaceful ending to a very wet week.

We walked out glad for our muddy feet and the beauty all around us.   


"A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself."
— John Muir