Posted on 08/12/2005 8:24:19 PM PDT by kingattax
Park officials find 400-foot waterfall in state's wilderness ----
WHISKEYTOWN, Calif. - Dick McDermott knows these parts as well as any man can. But McDermott says he's never laid eyes on the nearly 400-foot waterfall that park officials recently discovered in a remote corner of the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, 43,000 acres of wilderness in northern California.
The 92-year-old used to earn a meager living mining the creeks that meander through the deeply wooded hills. He has slogged through the brush and hiked overgrown logging roads, hunting deer and gathering wood for his homemade fiddles.
"Sure, I was surprised," he said from his home in the park, where he's lived for more than 70 years. "I've been all around that place, I never seen 'em." Story continues below ↓ advertisement
Until recently, very few had seen the roaring water that tumbles three tiers before pouring neatly into Crystal Creek. That such a spectacle should evade even park officials for nearly 40 years is remarkable, said park superintendent Jim Milestone.
"It wasn't on a map, no one on the trail crew knew about it. People who have been here 27 years had never seen it," said Milestone, who is leading an effort to clear a trail to the newly named Whiskeytown Falls. It's expected to be finished by next summer
Jim Milestone, superintendent of the California Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, moves some tools to be used by workers at the base of a recently discovered waterfall on Thursday.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Waterfall Pong
Someone tell me again why this is such a special story?
was there....no water???
Just goes to show how remote the northwest wilderness really is - there are plenty of places where humans have never set foot.
I really don't know. Someone "discovers" a waterfall that is apparently well know by others. Guess that is newsworthy.
I bet there is some gold to be discovered from all the runoff
There was abandoned logging equipment there. So much for being a place where no one ever set foot. Are the enviro-whackos going to complain?
It's Bush's fault!
It's been found before and no one remembers because it's in "Whiskeytown".
Angel Falls, Venezuela.
Hardly. From Instapundit:
Regarding that "undiscovered" waterfall in California, it's important to take such news with a dose of salt. A few years ago there was a lot of hoopla over the supposed discovery of new waterfalls in a little-visited corner of Yellowstone. What really happened was that someone decided to publish their location, which had been a sort of insider's secret, in a guidebook. The authors defined the waterfalls as undiscovered purely because information on them hadn't appeared in print. (Basically, nothing's real until it's available on Amazon.com.) Local reaction ran from amusement to outrage.
I'm sure the California falls were less widely known than the Yellowstone ones, but they weren't really undiscovered. Here's a passage from that CNN story you linked to:
"A small band of loggers that harvested Douglas firs in the early 1950s left behind a choker cable and part of a bulldozer. A knife blade stuck in a nearby tree indicates that others have also made the trek.But for park officials, the falls were merely a rumor for many years, said Russ Weatherbee, the wildlife biologist credited with the find.
A couple years ago, Weatherbee was cleaning out a cabinet of old maps when he stumbled across one from the 1960s marked with a note reading "Whiskeytown falls" near Crystal Creek."
Now, officials are planning to build a trail to the falls and put them on the map. A perfectly valid response, but probably bitter news to whatever backpackers, etc., really did know about the area.
Looks like the ream job by a urologist was a success on Susquatch.
We can never have enough waterfalls.... :)
Really big falls... Multnomah Falls in Oregon. Beautiful!!!
Warning 4 meg file
http://www.stone-partners.com/misc/multnomahfalls.jpg
No wonder they didn't discover it until recently. They had to change the definition of waterfalls to get that thing included. That's just water traveling over a rock face.
That was my first thought... "giant?"
If that remote, will wager the pot growers knew about it.
Beautiful picture! It looks like middle falls at Fowler's Camp. Great place, but watch out for the mountain lions. Those big cats live in those woods and eat the camper's pets.
Holtz
JeffersonRepublic.com
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