Berry Creek Waterfall Hike

Berry Creek Waterfall

Technique for taking pictures of waterfall
Camera: Kodak ZS712 digital camera
Mode : Shutter Priority
Shutter time: 2sec - 8sec was forced (other parameters were auto adjusted)
At such long shutter times, a tripod is a must.

Links:

Trail description
Big Basin Redwood State Park : Silicon Valley's Mountain retreat

We took the 10.5 mile round trip trail to the Berry Creek Waterfall located in the Big Basin Redwoods state park. An hour drive from the silicon valley via highway 9 and then highway 236 rises through redwood forests into the Santa Cruz mountains where the Big Basin Redwoods state park is located.

The trail takes about 5-6 hours for the round-trip journey. It is considered to be a strenuous hike, though we realized this at the end of the trail in the form of realization that modern-life does not lend much opportunity to use the calf muscles.

The trail winds through coastal redwood groves, crosses creeks and introduces one to many types of ferns and mushrooms growing under the canopy of redwood forest. The quiet was broken by an occasional rustling of leaves or the sound a flowing creek.

We saw many interesting mushrooms -of different colors- red, yellow and pink; and of different forms and textures. A few pictures are posted here.




The trail passed under some broken redwood tress ( pictured below). We also saw a few trees burned down in the forest fire last summer.


There are a couple of other falls along the Berry creek trail, in addition to the Berry Creek Fall pictured at the top of this blog. They are smaller, but one can approach much closer to them. A few teenagers were taking a dip in the pool at the base of one of the waterfalls.