The Cliff Dives

On our second day at the O RO Ranch, Tracy and I went with Jack and Daniel to the Cliff Dives - a particular spot in a canyon on the ranch's southern border. You can see the cliffs (and the falls) in the photo above - they're in the lower-right-hand middle of the photo: that flat, brown-and-white patch in the green of the gorge between the canyon walls; it's easier to view if you follow the link over to Picasa.

Our descent to the Dives followed the fold in the canyon visible in the photo at top, stretching from the lower-left-hand corner to roughly below the cliffs; from there, we turned to our left and scrambled up the photo frame to the cliffs. The photo at right shows us on the "trail" - really, it was a rarely-flowing, rapidly-falling stream down from the plateau to the canyon floor that ran over large volcanic boulders. The terrain was difficult, but manageable. The morning was cool - that helped a lot: in spite of the coolness, we were hot by the time we'd made it halfway down the stream bed.

The vistas were gorgeous, both looking out across the canyon, as in this photo, as well as looking back up the way we had just come. Although one of the more beautiful spots on the ranch, it's remoteness and the difficulty of the hike make it rarely frequented. Jack guessed that (not counting Native Americans), we were among 10-20 people who had ever hiked down to that spot. Impossible to prove, but an impressive claim, nonetheless. And one did feel the isolation of the spot - much more strongly than I've experienced in the mountains around here.

Halfway down the stream bed, we came to a large slab of lava rock that had collected pools of water, either from the recent rains or the receding water from the stream bed (still audible in some places, deep under the rocks). The disks in the water in this photo are bubbles - not eggs of some sort, but simple air bubbles. Some combination of heating from the sun and trapped air in the porous rock must have caused the bubbles to form. In the direct sunlight, the effect was quite stunning, particularly with the golden background provided by the algae that had formed in the bottom of the pool. We saw only a couple of these pools - it struck me as odd that there were so few. Perhaps the conditions for them to form are fairly specific?

Down at the cliffs, it was almost like another world. With the constant availability of water, large deciduous trees (maples and the like) were in evidence - we never saw those up on the plains. The falls were gorgeous. The top of the cliff (just at the upper right of the frame) must be some 60 feet high - it was from there that Jack and Daniel jumped into the pool below (though they didn't dive from that height). We've pictures of them jumping - frozen in mid air and just as they hit the water; I'm going to try to composite a time history of a jump together and post that, so you can see the whole jump in one picture. Should be interesting.

Due to the variability in water level at the base of the cliffs (it had quite recently flooded some three or four feet higher than the level at which we saw it), the roots of some of the trees were magnificently twisted and exposed. This picture shows one of my favorites, just across from the flow of water exiting the pool at the base of the cliffs. Just off-frame, to the left, is another fall, shown below, fed by the flow. These photos made lugging my tripod down (and up!) the canyon wall well worth it (though actually, the lenses and camera bodies I carried weighed more than the tripod). A friend loaned my his Canon backpack (and a really nice lens) which made carrying everything possible (and even fairly comfortable). I highly recommend a good, compartmentalized pack if you're going to lug your camera on hikes!

The cliffs for which the spot is named are really just one set in a series of cliffs and falls that range from that point down the canyon floor. We didn't explore in that direction, but I did walk back far enough to take a photo of this second set of falls. The tree roots in the previous photo are just off frame in the upper middle, and the falls from the first photo are in the background at the top-right of the frame. There was no jumping from this cliff, by the way: the pool at the base of the fall is quite small - too small a target to make in a jump, even if were it deep enough.

We stayed down at the falls for most of the day and hiked some up stream - all the way to a fork in the canyon wall. (Jack boldly declared we were the first humans to ever set foot in that part of the ranch - I tend to think some Native Americans or Cowboys from time past have been there - but who knows? It was remote country, and not easily reached.) Before leaving we stood in front of the tripod and I got a picture of the four of us. Not sure what I did wrong, but the trees behind us are in focus, where we are not. I might have forgotten to turn autofocus back on....

On the way out, I took this picture - a better look at the canyon, since the sun was at my back. It's unfortunate that scale can't be easily conveyed in a photo such as this - the canyon is vast and imposing when you're there, but just looks... bland in a photo.