After nearly a week straight of rain, the forecast called for Saturday to be a dry day. I wanted to take advantage and get back to Uvas since I figured everything would be flowing real well, even the off-the-beaten path Triple Falls. The shoot also gave me a change to fully test out some of my new technology: my Droid with the “My Tracks” app. The plan was to have My Tracks replace the small GPS datalogger I was using to geotag some of my photos. I didn’t know if the tree cover would present any problems (in addition to having the phone in my pants pocket), but it ended up performaing admirably. My Tracks even has the capability to export the tracklog as a GPX file to your My Maps on Google Maps, which I will ultimately use to catalog various hikes and shoots I go on.

In addition to the tight integration with Google Maps and Google Docs, My Tracks also gives me additional information the datalogger didn’t provide (at least not out of the box): more distance and elevation information.  For example, our hike came in at 3.5 miles and the total one-way elevation gain was about 600 ft.  In particular, the max elevation My Tracks reported was 1577 ft, which seems to be verifiable using the topo layer in the above map.  Lastly, one feature I didn’t utilize this time around is the adding waypoints to the track. In the future, I’ll try to remember to use this so I can place a marker when I’m near a POI, that way it will show up later when I upload the track to My Maps. But enough with My Tracks; back to the photography.

Our first stop was the unmarked Uvas Falls, which is off the main waterfall loop. You head out from the picnic area and as you start down the hill toward Swanson Creek, you veer off to the right and follow the trail East, where it will intersect with Uvas Creek. The waterfall is just upstream from where Swanson Creek meets Uvas Creek; a nice plunge of about about 20-25 ft or so.

After getting a few shots of Uvas Falls, we returned to the main Waterfall Loop trail in search of the trail to Triple Falls. The trail to this waterfall breaks off the mail loop shortly after Granuja Falls, and begins a rather steep climb up a few switchbacks. The trail peaks at about 1600 ft. with an bench and an overlook back toward San Jose. At this point in the hike, the rain was coming down pretty steadily, so we picked up the pace down the back side of the hill the last half mile or so. Amazingly, there were a couple small patches of unmelted snow at this elevation.

I had read ahead of time that Triple Falls is only worth visiting in periods shortly after rain, so I figured it would be flowing well since it had been raining for about a week straight — and I wasn’t disappointed. It’s a nice 30-35 ft cascade down the narrow side canyon.

The beauty of Uvas is the fact that it’s so close to the Valley, but once you get there you forget how close it really is. I highly recommend a visit, especially after some rain.

For more information on the My Tracks app, visit http://mytracks.appspot.com/.