Winter at Lost Creek Falls

Having given up on walking on the ice to the brownstone caves we decided to return to our original plan and drive over to Lost Creek Falls. This was to be our first time hiking to the falls in the winter. With the unusually warm conditions we figured there would be some water running over the falls. We had a great time at the falls. It was a great hike in and the falls offers a little seclusion and an opportunity to reflect. More photos from Lost Creek Falls can be found on my website.

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Lost Creek Falls

We made a late fall visit to Lost Creek Falls where we met up with some friends for the hike into the falls. It was the week before deer hunting season and the last chance we would have do do any hiking in the woods before all of the nut cases started shooting. The leaves were down and the sun was in the wrong spot but any day at Lost Creek Falls is a good day. Things had really changed since our last visit. There are now signs to the falls, the parking lot has changed and a boardwalk has been installed along the muddy sections of the trail. This is really a great improvement. More photos from Lost Creek Falls can be found on my website.

Favorite Waterfall Photos of 2015

Amnicon Falls State Park – My favorite waterfall photography location is Amnicon Falls State Park. Almost every time we drive by I stop to at least look at it and usually take some photos.

Lost Creek Falls – I typically hike into Lost Creek Falls at least once every summer to take photos.

Lower Falls Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone – This was take on a spring trip to Yellowstone State Park. It was a stormy day with some beautiful clouds above the falls.

Jay Cooke State Park – Not a waterfall we frequent but we stopped late in the fall. This particular waterfall was difficult to photograph in its entirety but provided an opportunity for an intimate photo of the water flowing over the top of the falls.

Willow River State Park – Willow Falls is a waterfall that is not particularly appealing to photograph as a whole but does offer some nice intimate shots of small areas around the main falls.

Lost Creek Falls

After ideal conditions at Amnicon Falls State Park we looked forward to visiting Lost Creek Falls. Unfortunately by the time we reached Lost Creek Falls the nice cloud cover had dissipated and were photographing in harsh lighting conditions. Nevertheless it is always great to visit Lost Creek Falls.

Lost Creek Falls

We used Duluth as a base and headed out to photograph the waterfalls along the south shore of Lake Superior between Superior and Bayfield. Our first stop was Twin Falls but we were very disappointed to find there was almost no water flowing over Twin Falls. We continued on to Lost Creek Falls.

More photos from Lost Creek Falls can be found on my website.

With all of the recent rain the trail was very muddy. We hiked in from Klemik Road because isn’t as steep as the trail from Cornucopia. There were a lot of mud holes in the trail and knee boots would be a good choice on this hike.

There were a lot of wildflowers in bloom along the trail including a rare find. I just happened to look into the wood at the right moment to see this Pink Lady Slipper hiding under dome other plants.

Bunchberry

Again we didn’t find as much water flowing in the river as we expected given all of the rain and the wet trail. However, there was enough water to provide some nice shots.

Lost Creek Falls

The week before gun deer hunting season opened We decided to hike into Lost Creek falls. Normally we hike in from Klemik Road but this time we decided to try an alternate trail into the falls. This trail  can be reached by driving out of Cornucopia, Wisconsin on highway C toward Washburn. There is a long hill as you leave town. Near the top of the hill you take Trail Drive to the right. This is the first named road on the right as you leave town. There are farm fields on both sides of the road. About a quarter of a mile down Trail Drive you will find a small parking area on your left with a sign for Lost Creek Falls.

This is a much more challenging trail than the Klemik Road trail. The Klemik Road Trail is an ATV/Snowmobile/Sled Dog trail and is fairly wide and easy to follow. It’s disadvantage is that there are low spots in the trail any you generally ending up walking though water. That normally doesn’t bother us because we always wear knee boots when photographing waterfalls. It seems the best shots are always on the other side of the river. 

There are a lot of ups and downs on the trail. It had rained the day before and the trail was wet and muddy in spots. It would have been easy to slip on the mud and tumble into a ravine.

It looked like the trail had recently been marked using an iridescent blue paint on the trees. It was easy to follow but if it had not been marked we would have never made it to Lost Creek Falls. I initially thought this was some rare fungus until my wife looked up and noticed that someone had just marked the trail with spray paint which had fallen on the plants on the ground.

Just before reaching Lost Creek Falls the trail reaches Lost Creek which can be seen below the trail in a narrow valley. A little further on there are some nice waterfalls but you will have to work your way down into the valley to see them up close. The following three photos were taken at the small falls just before reaching Lost Creek Falls.

We didn’t know what to expect this late in the season. There was a good water flow but what interested me the most was the fact that Ice was just starting to form around the Falls.

More photos from Lost Creek Falls can be found on my website.

What is It?

My wife and I decided to hike into Lost Creek Falls on a different trail from the one we normally use. At the start of the hike I noticed what appeared to be an iridescent blue fungus growing on some of the plants along the trail. I was really excited and pointed it out to my wife. My wife indicated it was not a fungus but what was it?

I’ll give the answer on tomorrows post. More photos from Last Creek Falls can be found on my website.

Lost Creek Falls

Last week my wife and I made the short walk into Lost Creek Falls. It’s been a while for me and it was my wife’s first time. On the way to the falls we stopped and bought a pair of Muck Boots for her because I knew the trip to the falls would be over some wet ground and it makes it easier to walk through Lost Creek.

We definitely needed them because it had been raining and the ATV trail to the falls from Klemik Road is usually filled with pot holes and low boggy areas. I was also a little apprehensive about the clarity of the water. It has been raining a lot and some of the streams we encountered along the drive up were filed with silt.

When we reached the falls there were already a few people at the falls. Fortunately they left as I was starting to take photos. More people arrived as we were leaving the falls. This is the most people I’ve ever seen at the falls. The weather was cool and the best part there wasn’t a mosquito in sight.

Water conditions at the falls were actually quite good and I was able to get some good photographs.

Lost Creek Falls

Lost Creek

This past week I made my spring trek to Lost Creek Falls. Lost Creek is always nice in the spring with a little more water in the falls and usually a large number of flowers to be found along the trail. I was in Bayfield when the weather turned and in started to cloud up. Cloudy weather is an ideal time to visit Lost Creek Falls because you don’t have to deal with high contrast light conditions when the sun is out. When I arrived at the trailhead I was a little disappointed to find four other cars parked along the road. Since Lost Creek Falls is such a small area I knew photography would be difficult with other people at the falls. After closer inspection I discovered that they were four wheelers and had gone off on another trail so it didn’t appear anyone else was at the falls.

Columbine

Pink Lady's Slipper

I quickly discovered that the hike in was going to be a muddy affair. It is usually muddy on the trail but this year there was more mud than usual. I always wear knee  boots on this hike because of the mud on the trail and because I like to wade the creek by the falls. The hike in usually takes about twenty minutes but it took a lot longer because there were a large number of Ferns and wildflowers along the trail. These included Swamp Buttercups, Bunchberry, Nodding Trillium, Bluebead Lily, Star Flower, Wild Strawberries, Columbine, False Lilly of the Valley and my favorite Pink Lady’s Slipper. I only saw one Pink Lady’s Slipper and it is the only one I’ve seen along this trail.

Lost Creek Falls

Lost Creek Falls

As luck would have it I doodled along the trail long enough for the clouds to dissipate so the sun was out with intermittent clouds. I was still able to photograph the falls in the shade and spent the times when the sun was out taking intimate photographs of various sections of the falls that were in the shade.

 

Lost Creek Falls

This is a great time to make the trip to the falls. There are lots of flowers out, there is a good water flow over the falls and there were no mosquitoes.

More photos of Lost Creek Falls can be found on my website.

What to do when it is 100+ degrees out?

The first week of June has been really hot. Earlier in the week the temperatures started rising. What to do? I hoped for a late spring blizzard but that didn’t seem to forthcoming. I could stay home and photograph birds from my air conditioned living room but even the birds were saying in the woods where it was cooler. The other option, if you live in the upper Midwest, is to drive up to Lake Superior where it was 40 degrees cooler. I decided it was time for my spring road trip to the Minnesota North Shore. I had planned on going a week later but the chance to cool off couldn’t be ignored. The last thing my wife said to me was to take some warm clothes. Why? it was still in the 60’s on the North Shore.

High Falls

I drove up to the Canadian border to check out High Falls at Grand Portage State Park. I had visited high falls earlier in the spring during the spring melt and there had been so much water coming over the falls that it was almost impossible to photograph. This time the water levels were considerably lower. Late in the day the sun reaches the trees above the falls but the falls is mainly in the shadows.

Grand Marais Harbor

After photographing at Grand Portage I drove back to Grand Marais, Minnesota to spent the night and hopefully capture some nice sunset shots in the harbor area. Things looked promising during the drive back because it was clear in the west and there were some nice clouds overhead. Unfortunately by the time I reached Grand Marais all of the clouds were gone and it was a drab clear sunset. After a quick dinner at Sven and Ole’s I went out to get some shots at Artists Point. I was a little surprised to find that it was cold really cold. There was a strong wind blowing off of the lake and it felt like winter. Where were those warm cloths I was told to bring?

Cascade River

The next morning I had hoped for some sunrise shots but there was a heavy fog over the harbor so I drove down to the Cascade River State park, my favorite waterfall location on the North Shore. I wasn’t disappointed. The water levels were such that photography was good. The fog had burned off by this time but the cascades were still in the shade.

Sugarloaf Cove

One of my usual stops is Sugarloaf Cove. It was a nice day out so I decided to stop and look around. There was still some fog along the coast which made for a nice photo.

I then drove down to Tofte to get a bite to eat. As I drove into town I noticed the fog rolling in on Bluefin Bay, I

Bluefin Bay

thought this might make a good shot but didn’t see any place to stop. I turned around and found a place to park and took the trail along the bay to a nice vantage point. I took a few shots and decided to grab something to eat and brought it back down to the lake so I could watch the fog role in and out.

Schovel Point

After a relaxing breakfast I headed down to Tettegouche State Park. My wife and I had been at Tettegouche the end of March after the violent spring storm had hit and left much of the lakeshore enchased in ice. It had been a number of years since I had walked out to Shovel Point in the spring so I headed out to see what it looked like without the ice. For those of you who haven’t been in the area recently the first thing you will notice is that they are working on the trails and have made some improvements to the trail going down to the lake. The second thing is the arch has collapsed and is now called the tower. This happened last year.  It was a beautiful cool day. It didn’t look like the storm have done much damage to the trees.

Amnicon Falls State Park

Since it was a bright  sunny day I decided to head back toward Wisconsin and drive down to Wisconsin Point and forgo any waterfall photography along the way. As luck would have it as I reached Duluth the clouds came back making it a great time for waterfall photography. Rather than drive back up the North Shore I decided to stop at Amnicon Falls State Park. I normally stop at Amnicon when traveling through the area. I quickly realized that this is the first time I had been at Amnicon when it was entirely cloudy out. Normally it is a bright sunny day and I have to fight the high contrast light. The light was the best I’ve seen in the park for photographing waterfalls. I lucked out, because a group of kids had just finished swimming in the river so I didn’t have contend with them although there were enough people around that I have to shoot around them. A couple of lovers were particularly annoying because they seemed to want to make out every where I wanted to shoot.

Morgan Falls

After spending a couple of hours at Amnicon I decided to head to Ashland for the night and hopefully some nice sunset shots of the harbor. I arrived about 5 p.m. and concluded that there was enough time to drive out to Morgan Falls and back before sunset. It was late enough in the day that I knew Morgan Falls would be entirely in the shade. Normally Morgan falls has a large violent population of mosquitoes but today things were quiet. Fortunately the only people at the falls were on their way out when I went in so I had the falls to myself. There was a fair amount of water coming over the falls.

By the time I had gotten back to the car the clouds had come back and it was completely cloudy so there was no opportunity for sunset photos. I called home to check on the next day’s weather which was supposed to be sunny then partly cloudy. When I woke up at 4:30 it was still cloudy with only a sliver of light in the east. As it turned out if  sunset would have been an hour later it would have been spectacular because it cleared in the east with a heave cover of clouds overhead.

Bayfield Harbor

I decided to drive over to Bayfield to see what was going on. It is still a little early in the season and Bayfield is still a sleepy little town without much activity. That will all change in a few weeks. The light was good with a combination of sunshine and clouds. I walked around town for a while then decided to head down to Little Sand Bay.

Herring Shed

I don’t recall ever having visited the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore at Little Sand Bay and didn’t know what to expect.  The National Park Service has preserved the Hokenson Brothers Fishery at Little Sand Bay including most of the buildings and some of the equipment. It was well worth the stop.

Fishing Boat

The next stop was  Cornucopia and took a few shots of the old fishing boats preserved at a small park in town.

Lost Creek Falls

There were enough clouds around to make a visit to Lost Creek Falls worthwhile. I was a little worried as I neared the trailhead when I found four cars parked along the road. As it turns out they were four wheeling and had gone on a different trail. There were lots of flowers out along the trail. Most of the way I followed some tracks of a doe and fawn. The trail was muddier than I have ever seen it. I thought this might mean there was a lot of water coming over the falls but that wasn’t the case. The water flow was good but the water level in the pond below the falls was lower than I’ve seen it in some time. It was easy to work around the falls with the low water. The clouds kept moving in and out so I had to spend more time than I wanted waiting for cloud cover.

Word was that the warm weather was over so it was time to head back home.