Banakas | Photography

There Is Always Next Time

For the past several posts, I have been talking about this creek/river that I’ve been exploring that doesn’t have a trail or type of path. This place is nothing but waterfall after waterfall surrounded by steep hills on both sides. The only real way to get up this creek is to either wade through it and climb the rocks or carefully make your way along either side, while holding on to rocks and/or tree trunks.

This is the furthest I have been so far, but there will always be a next time. This time however, was quite interesting in the fact that I had brought with me a camera that runs about 3 thousand dollars, which I had rented for the weekend. This particular point in the river made a turn to the left and my friend Jerry Denham and I were making our way up on the right side. We finally reached this area and as you can see there is a rock wall that we were not able to get up or around. So I decided that I wanted to get to the left side and carefully stepped and hopped my way across the river.

You can’t see it in this particular image, but just to the left after making the turn in the river, there is a slope of rock that wasn’t wet but I just needed to get up there and in my way was a steeper grade of rock that was covered in moss, but had a few spots that weren’t (the bottom left portion of this image). All I had to do was get there and then I could have worked my way further up, but it wasn’t in the cards this time…

I slipped and fell into the river. For some reason, maybe Murphy’s Law, all along this river you can see the bottom and it wasn’t really that deep, maybe knee deep for the most part and other shallower areas, but the one place I fell in, was waist deep. Upon falling my first thought was to do everything I could to keep the camera out of the water (which I did), but my second thought was that the water wasn’t as cold as I had originally imagined, which is weird, seeing that this is mountain water and it’s the middle of the winter.

But in the end, the camera stayed dry, I did not, and due to a time constraint, my buddy and I had to turn back and head home.

Next time I come out here, I will have some chest waders, and I will be better prepared. I have got to see what’s up over the top of this fall.

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