The Search for a Fall—Franklin Lake, Sequoia National Park
7/15/26
This is the third night I’m unable to sleep. Random pains pop up and recede with a self-massage or simply by ignoring them. There is a pinch in my shoulder. My arthritic big toe on my left foot sings an aria that quiets to a hum. I toss and turn. Left side. Right side. Back. This goes on all night. I’m cold, then sticky and hot. Then I’m cold and hot at the same time like my body has different weather zones.
I unzip the sleeping bag then later zip it back—do the same with the tent fly. I put more clothes in the stuff sack I’m using for a pillow and then take some out.
The one constant other than no sleep is a distant roar of a waterfall somewhere at the east end of Franklin Lake. I can’t see it from my eagle’s perch on a granite shelf high above, but the concave bowl of mountains behind it seem to be acting like a parabolic reflector beaming the white noise directly into my camp hundreds of yards away. For some reason, this white noise is not helping me fall asleep.
In any case, I’m determined to hike over there tomorrow and find where the fall is.
Morning (finally)
I have FOMO about all these mountain flowers. My phone has died and I can’t take pictures. I want to record them all and I’ve started by taking notes on a few. I’m playing flower scientist.
#1 A water-loving sunflower with lush leaves at the base in thick clumps of swords. The flower sits atop a long, straight stem arising from the leaves. It has a golden or brown ball with yellow petals on the underside. I would call these flowers Bear in a Tutu if I were to name them. They seem to take over around sources of water.
#2 A lavender to white flower-ball about the size of an aggie on a long, slender green stem. Where they are prevalent over bare soil their shadows appear as polka dots on the earth.
More FOMO if my pen dries out. There is beauty everywhere. I can’t record it all. I have to go slow. I have a waterfall to find.
10 a.m. — What appear to be soap bubbles go for 75 yards along the south shore of Franklin Lake. Could it be dish washing from the five campers that came in last night or something natural in the environment? Getting a handful I feel and smell nothing as I mash them between my fingers.
I’ve gone another 50 yards past them to filter water for this trek. The white noise is slightly louder here. At my camp the falls sound like someone filling up a bathtub down the hall. Trout are jumping everywhere. They are easy to see in the clear water—rainbows with three sets of pink fins along the bottom: anal, pelvic and pectoral. The fingerlings stay in the shallow streams coming into the lake or the few places where there is rocky cover on the edge. Most of the adults I see are six to eight inches long.
I set aside four different bottle caps as I prepare to use my squeeze filter to refill my bottle. Two caps are for the dirty and clean end of the filter, one cap for the collection bag and one for my bottle.
I could have saved myself some strain if I’d known that the trail follows Franklin Creek leaves all the way from where we started three days ago. I could have filtered water as I came up, never carrying more than my half liter bottle. Instead I carried a liter and a half. That’s 3.3 pounds.
Then there are the two creamy cheese pouches for my mac and cheese dinner obligation. That added another pound. If there was ever a time for the powder version…
I could go on about the ways I could have made my forty pound pack lighter but I wouldn’t be on this excellent adventure now if my body had let me continue up the trail instead of saying, “We stay at Franklin Lake.” I would have continued on with the other guys who left yesterday. I wouldn’t be searching for this waterfall if my hips—a part of my body I wasn’t sure I even had—had not screamed at me to stop every six steps the whole way up this mountain.
Filtering my water is becoming a ritual I very much enjoy. It reminds me of my 1994 motorcycle trip from SF to Anchorage. I stopped every hundred miles to oil my chain. I would put a single drop of oil on each link. It was like counting Buddha beads.
I was never so good at maintaining that chain in daily life. It seems with solitude and time routines take on a special joy.
At the moment there is not a cloud in the sky. The temperature feels like 65. This is the first day without clouds but the temperature is holding steady at this high altitude.
I’m now almost directly across from the source of white noise at the end of the lake where it begins to bend. Still the source is not apparent. My ears direct me towards a jagged dark line etched into the green, shrubby cinquefoil bush. I hold up my finger to gauge its width and it fills up less than half my vertical finger.I imagine the dark line is made by shadow hiding a deep waterfall.
If I pay attention I can just see the slightest movement—a quarter inch patch of pulsing white on the side of the dark crack. At this distance the water is a chameleon against the white boulder it falls next to.
I’d really like to see a rattlesnake, but according to the park rangers it’s more likely down in Rattlesnake Canyon where the guys have gone. I hiked with my friend up to Franklin Pass yesterday and it was easy to keep up only carrying a daypack. At 11,800 feet that’s the highest altitude I’ve ever been on land. After parting ways, I still had energy to explore the upper Franklin Lake before returning to camp.
Lower Franklin was dammed in 1905 by the Whitney Power Company. A ranger at the Mineral King station said it was already a lake. I suppose the authorities just wanted to have a more consistent flow. It’s now controlled by Southern California Edison along with two other lakes that together generate power in aptly named, Three Rivers, CA.
Unused rectangular blocks of granite still sit where they were shaped after being blasted from the mountain a few hundred feet from the dam. The dam is made of these blocks stacked twenty feet high with a row of buttresses similarly made and filled with rock between them.
The lake end opposite the dam where I am now has a huge coliseum feel with a two hundred foot granite wall in the center and boulders, steps and shelves on either side with rivers of green bush—audience members leaving their seats to come down to the water’s edge.
Middle Franklin Lake, unviewable from here, sits atop the granite wall and is the source of the falling water. Patches of snow are still holding to the mountain up there.
I’m hoping that once I’ve found the falls the lady of the lake will release the power of sleep on me tonight since white noise has tended to bestow that favor in the past.
This excursion started out as a beach stroll that quickly became a parkour course. There is no trail around the lake. The bushes are the biggest impediment and I have to go up and down the boulders to find paths around them. The soles of my boots have excellent gripping power on the sandpaper-like granite.
On my own land I might whack the vegetation with my machete to make a trail but this land is my land only in the sense of the song. I try not to step on moss or grass if I can find a stone.
On my infrequent trips into the wild I used to scoff at people using walking sticks like the ones I’m now employing. They are invaluable. I use them as handholds to pull me up and stops to help me step down. If a rattler sees one before me perhaps they’ll let me know.
There are times when I need to take these poles into one hand to lean into a boulder or grab an edge. Still the poles are more handy than not.
If hiking sticks need a better advocate than myself I only ask you to look at many of the photos and sketches of John Muir, perhaps the most widely known explorer of these mountains. A pole was very much his friend.
Back down on the shore I find two gentle falls coming into the lake on this southeast side. They are making noise but not enough to make it up to my camp.
On the second fall a trout enjoys lounging in the rapids that seem to be going backwards where the stream meets the lake. I’m baffled. Could the small sunken timber just shy of bridging two boulders here be enough to create a dam that the water is bouncing off? Ah no! It is a western breeze creating waves coming toward me across the lake. Where the waves meet the rapids it creates this backward moving river phenomenon.
My daypack is the “brain” taken off my backpack—a hand me down from my friend. It’s a removable zippered bag on the top of the pack that can be used as a large fanny pack. I have a journal in it and I’m stopping often when I think I have something to say. It’s making the going slow but pleasurable. I’ve figured out how to loosen the buckle to slide the bag around to my front and retrieve my journal without taking it off. Would I have thought of this if I’d never seen anyone do it? Perhaps. Still, we tend to remember things we’ve seen.
For instance, hiking with my friend he flips his walking sticks to his backside, places them under his pack and then lifts it to give his shoulders some temporary relief. It’s a nice trick that I learn to copy.
The sloping granite slab I’ve plopped down on to write has fissures where plants grow. The central one is almost entirely filled with marmot scat. The slightly tapered cylinders laid all over have rolled to the indentation with the help of gravity, and the drying effect of wind and sun. The volume goes to show that marmots don’t just shit where campers leave a few stray tortilla crumbs. Obviously there are things in the wild they eat. It makes me rethink their reputation as thieves and opportunists.
From here I’m starting to get a better picture of the noisy falls. The black line is more hidden at this angle, but at the bottom I see white rivulets rolling over a black bar that I’m guessing is the same white granite made dark by water. I had thought the color was a deep shadow but it looks instead like wet rock.
I’ve come to another falling creek a third of the way around the end and as much as I’d like to go down and see where it meets the water it is locked off with brush. The only clear way around is to go up. When I get to the mid-point it looks like I’ll be able to head down to refill my bottle again.
I might have skipped bringing it and just used the gravity hose the filter comes with, but having a bottle is less awkward and doesn’t require me to squeeze the collection bag as I suck on the hose.
I’ve got a granola bar and a chicken stick to eat for a snack. If I’d thought this outing would be so long I’d’ve brought lunch. Truth is I’m not too hungry. The packets of tunafish, chicken and other rations stopped being appealing after a few days.
The biggest reason to eat this food now is to make my pack lighter on the way out. I’d be happy if I could use up all my white gas too.
It took me seven hours to get up to Franklin Lake with the backpack. Seven miles in seven hours and some of those miles took two.
Maybe I didn’t pack the bag the right way. I didn’t have the bear canister high enough in the pack. Also, I didn’t remember I had a chest strap until we were already at camp and my friend pointed it out. That would have helped minimize any wobbling. Mostly it’s just the fact that I’m not in backpacking shape. Age doesn’t help but my friend is four years older and he is “crushing it”. (He’s tried to encourage me with those words but I told him I felt more crushed than crushing.)
I’ve come to a fourth stream now buried under the rocks. I can’t see it. The sound comes and goes as I make my way down a playground of boulders. My intended route was to stay high but my curiosity has me following the sound to see if the hidden stream comes into daylight before the lake. I see a possible path of boulders close to shore that may get me to the spot I want to go. Maybe I can achieve both goals.
I’m thinking more about these big rocks now that I’m navigating them. I’ve come across a few loose, two-head-size ones that I caused to roll and some large flat ones that see-sawed when I stepped on and off again.
It all leads me to the thought that one of the larger prize-winning-hog-size stones could be delicately balanced on a precipice that my 170 pounds might dislodge and pin me under with a broken arm or leg. I’m probably safe with the bull and elephant-size boulders, but none of these got here by anything other than violent tumbling and they all have their own clock and ambition downward.
The subterranean stream I’ve been hearing appears in a rock window fifty feet from shore but the path I thought might get to the bottom isn’t viable so I start climbing back to my original route.
In the aquamarine waters next to the shoreline is the ultimate future for many of these boulders. There a deceptive one foot strip of fine gravel looks like a good, firm place to step but it turns out the mix of tiny rocks are not hard packed but in a buoyant, thick layer. The uninitiated person who steps there sinks and throws their body sideways. However, if you can find a rock to sit on it feels good thrusting your sore hiking feet in the grit and wiggling your toes.
I’ve come to the half way point around the lake end. The big rock wall here has an overhang that would make a good place to ride out a rain storm pushing west, however a storm coming opposite would make you feel like a seed in a mortar.
The shoreline is within reach and just over the next bench is probably the most sizable source of water filling this lake. But I’m no expert. Water is likely sifting in everywhere at the base of these mountains. There is not a lot of visible snow left but who knows how deep the ice goes in those cracks.
I’m thinking I should use up the day as much as possible and cook dinner after the sun goes down tonight. It will make cleaning up more difficult, but going to bed at sunset makes for long hours of no sleep.
I’ve been stopping so much I only have a vague notion of what time it is. Noon? Two? Four? I forgot my wristwatch at camp and, as I’ve said, my phone has died. Much as I wish I could take more pictures, I’d likely not be writing much if I was. Writing is often the last thing I do. Strangely, it is the thing I love most to have done.
I’m down at the lake’s edge now sitting on a gently sloping whale of a rock. If the definition of a boulder is a rock that is free of anything else, this is not one. This is part of a shelf firmly cemented to whatever is beneath it.
It’s easy to get water here. Filtering is becoming second nature. It occurs to me that I could take off my clothes and swim over to find where that hidden fall reaches the lake. I was in the water yesterday and it’s cool and refreshing. Without a cloud in the sky it would take no time for me to dry off.
On second thought, if I mess around too much the rest of this adventure might begin to feel like a chore. Best to eat my snacks and move on.
In the distance I hear a male Sooty grouse making its mating call. I saw one near my camp this morning sitting very still under a bush. The sound is similar to the sliding bass you can make by hitting a conga and pushing a wetted finger across the skin. It also sounds a lot like the empty 5 gallon water drums I used to bring to school for my first graders to bang on at recess.
It’s taken me three days but I finally feel really good about being on this adventure—just don’t ask me tonight when I’m tossing and turning.
I’ve made it over the bench to the falls. They are certainly making a grand noise. I can see my orange tent peaking from behind the granite wall in my camp and the large, ancient and rare Foxtail pine with its orange exposed wood nearby.
The noisy waterfall comes from behind a boulder surrounded by bush. Then it drops in a series of steps and slides into a curvy s-shape before pouring over that dark bar of rock that I could see from a distance. I’m no expert at estimating flow but I’ll venture a guess of 180 gallons a minute.
A second fall further west is joined by a trickling stream. They flow together into a shallow brook with skinny steps that goes parallel to the lake for fifty yards and contains darting trout fry. I walk out to the end where it joins the lake between two long rocks that form a sort of slip dock for a boulder parked in the middle like a tugboat that has skidded in.
I then walk back shoreside to look at where the main fall enters. I climb back on the prominence. From the bar the water slides down a slope into a pool then flows beneath a flat bush reaching across the banks. It rolls down over double-head-size stones into more pools before entering the lake on three broad offset steps that have me imagining a 1950s Hollywood movie goddess sashaying out of her swimming pool. All architecture is copied from nature.
I think I’d better eat that granola bar that I ended up saving. I’m getting a little punchy and still want to make it up to the middle lake.
I work my way around a wide area of bush across some long boulders where the white mountain called Florence Peak trails into the red one named Tulare Peak.
I double back to the top and find where the fall begins. It is not coming directly from the middle lake but a series of three ponds, each lower than the next. None of these ponds were visible from the high pass I was on yesterday. All have clear water and appear to be about five to ten feet deep. A breeze is rippling the surface making it difficult to see if there are fish.
Each pond is surrounded by red scree from crumbling Tulare Peak a thousand feet above. Most of the rocks are no larger than a fist. My footsteps make ringing glass sounds where thin shards come against each other.
There is some sort of yellow buttercup flower in bloom along the east side of the first pond. All these ponds are eminently dippable except for those fist size rocks that line the shallow water. The only way to get in without water shoes would be to carefully prostrate yourself and scooch in until the water safely floats you from shore.
Phosphorescent green moss clings to the rocks in the rapids that connect the ponds and looks like a blurry photograph.
The top pond is separated from Middle Franklin Lake by a mounded field of a 100,000 tons of red rock. (Okay, maybe my powers of estimation have reached their limit here, but it’s a lot.)
It’s clear these ponds are fed by the lake but there is no obvious exit of water in the form of a fall or stream. Perhaps it comes up unseen somewhere in the middle of a pond.
On the lake side, however, I see where it enters. There is no through-stream, cave or hole only a U-shaped indention in the mass of scree where the lake spills into a stream and then five feet away becomes a pool where the water is sucked into the stones.
With the amount of water it seems like I’d see a whirl or hear a slurping sound but there is simply a calm pool where it all goes down. The broad heap of stones is just a sieve for all that water to pass through. I suppose there is not enough debris up here to clog the holes. There are no trees. It is barren of plants except for a few lakeside flowers and sedges.
I walk over to the lowest patch of snow on the mountain. The red scree shifts under my weight. At least the round ankle-twisters are rare here and easy to avoid.
The snow is not ice, but it’s firm with a top slushy layer that takes my footprints. Fine red sand blown off the talus colors parts of the wavy field making it look like a large topographic model of some Siberian landscape of snow-patched hills.
What appears to be one of the smallest birds I’ve ever seen, outside of hummers, hops across the landscape pecking at something. At this distance I cannot see any coloration. The bright sun makes it appear as a silhouette.
A few rocks are in the snow at the bottom of oversized conical pits as if they were dropped there burning hot and melted to the bottom.
It’s time to leave this landscape. The sun has moved from east to the west. I’ve been out all day. I’m getting hungry and tired yet… I can’t help but stop at the lake again to admire fine bunches of rush with perfectly cylindrical stalks surrounded by blue moss and another ground cover as tidy and bright green as newly laid synthetic grass. It feels more like a modern art exhibit than living things.
The wind dies for a bit and I see trout floating inside an invisible medium. Again…unreal.
I make it back to the sturdy, large boulders relieved to be beyond the loose rocks that pivot under my weight. I’m drawn to the overlook but afraid to get too close to the front edge where it begins to slope downward and has patches of slippery sand before the two-hundred foot drop. The side is safer and I can see well-enough the first steps in mapping my way back to camp.
