Sugar Creek
May 16, 2010
Surrounded by some of the most scenic areas in the state, it seems Sugar Creek
has been hiding in plain site. Even though I'd driven over it countless times,
I didn't notice it until I saw it on a topographic map. The creek runs
underneath Highway 123 at a sharp, dangerous turn, and I think most folks are
too focused on the road to see the stream. I did a search online and didn't
find any evidence that anybody had explored the creek recently. There were no
photos or blog posts.
I was hoping the stream would reveal something special like its next door
neighbors: Bear Creek with its Sidewinder Falls, Pam's Grotto, Pack Rat Falls,
and Haw Creek Falls.
I cooked up a plan involving my mountain bike that would cut my hiking distance
in half. I arrived at the highway crossing, just east of the Big Piney Creek
bridge at Fort Douglas, around 7:30 in the morning. I hid my camera gear in the
bushes, then drove up the highway to park at the Wheeler Cemetery road.
I rode my bike back down the mountain, a distance of 3.8 miles. I only had to
pedal in a few spots, the rest of the ride was downhill. In fact, with an
elevation drop of 1,100 feet, I had to use the brakes a few times to stay
within a safe speed.
Then I grabbed my camera gear and stashed the bike in those bushes and I was
finally off to explore Sugar Creek. Within the first hundred yards I came upon
a young raccoon so intent on catching crawdads that it didn't even see me walk
up. It was an unforgettable scene. The little guy was working by feel alone. He
was reaching down into the moving water, too murky to see through, and turning
over rocks. In just a couple of minutes he caught a couple of small crawfish,
which he quickly munched and swallowed. I tried my best to slowly get the
camera out of the bag, but at some point the raccoon noticed me and ran into a
hole at the bottom of a huge Sycamore. I went ahead and set the camera at the
tripod and aimed it at the hole and after waiting for 15 minutes got a single
shot of the raccoon sneaking a peak at me.
My assertion that no two streams are alike held true for Sugar Creek. I didn't
find any major scenic features, no tall waterfalls or natural bridges, but
Sugar Creek is perhaps the most gentle, pleasant stream I've visited in a long
time. Moss seemed to cover nearly everything, and there were ferns everywhere.
The woods were filled with lots of big Beech trees and I passed many giant
boulders. The stream bed was relatively narrow. It seems like half the time the
stream bed was filled with rocks and stones, and the other half it was solid
bedrock.
In the first mile, I passed bluffs 40 to 60 feet tall on one side of the stream
or the other. I wore my new felt-soled NRS water shoes and simply walked up the
middle of the stream. It was so nice to be able to do that! And when I did have
to walk up on to the forested bank, there was no ice storm debris to detour
around, no sticker bushes, and hardly any ducking underneath tree limbs. I
moved up the creek very fast.
The prettiest waterfall, which cascaded down multiple drops for an overall
height of perhaps 12 feet, was about 2 miles up the stream. As I set up the
camera to take pictures from the big pool of green water below, loud thunder
began to boom. After taking a lot of pictures from different angles, I packed
up the camera and tried to wade through the water to the base of the falls, but
I found the pool to be quite deep. A similar pool below a waterfall downstream
had also been unusually deep compared to the rest of the stream.
I walked through the woods to the right to get above the falls and continued
walking upstream.
As I stopped at the next small waterfall I encountered, the sky got very dark,
to the point that it was a bit difficult to see, and it thundered a lot. It
started raining lightly but hardly any of that got to me underneath the canopy.
Still, I got scared and put on my raincoat for a bit, but I got too warm so I
took it off.
As I continued upstream the creek got shallower and narrower. At the point where
its two main source drainages ran down the mountainside to merge, the stream
was not much more than a rocky path through the woods.
I hung a right to bushwhack steeply up the mountainside toward the Tahoe. It was
tougher than I imagined, especially in those thin water shoes. I had to walk
half a mile with an elevation gain of 650 feet. I came upon a spot where I
think lightning struck a tree. All around the base of the tree, there were
black rocks that looked like they'd been blasted out of the ground. It was
pretty bizarre!
I got to the Tahoe a little before 4 o'clock and drove back down to retrieve the
bike. It was a nice change to be finished with a long hike and have plenty of
daylight left.
