Feather Falls

I finally got to this gem, the highest in Northern California at 420 feet and the sixth highest in the US. It was well-subscribed considering it's so out of the way, but I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised as it was a warm sunny day, and after a wet winter it finally feels like California around here again.

I keep thinking I've seen every corner of California (I mentioned this after my Channel Islands trip) and then again I get somewhere I've never been, have never heard the names of the towns or the numbers of the highways. Feather Falls is at the southwestern corner of Plumas National Forest on a tributary of the similarly named Feather River. Plumas NF is interesting because it's at the northern end of the Sierras, and it's here that the Sierra ecosystem transitions to the Cascades. Below, you'll see why the Frey Creek crossing is well-known as a ladybug gathering site, quite common at smallish stream valleys in the Sierras. At the end you can make out flakes of pyrite in the mud.