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Black Wolf Falls (which also goes by the name Black Wall Falls and Monarch Falls) is a conspicuous presence as you leave the Silver City and head into Mineral King Valley.
Getting here on the long, narrow, and winding Mineral King Road might give the uninitiated driver some white knuckles, but the sense of being in a totally different place is the kind of escape most city slickers like myself long for.
While it's easy to identify this waterfall, it wasn't so easy for us to get a decent photograph of it. The views from the road are blocked by the dry foliage around the falls. We scrambled over the dry foliage and uneven footing to get right up to the base of the falls (as photographed above), but even that is not a very satisfying view. We didn't try to walk up the switchbacks for a top-down view of the falls however. I'd imagine that might yield the best views and perhaps the safest.
One more thing... You'll want to check the undercarriage of your car and your radiator hoses when you're ready to leave Mineral King. There are marmots here that for some reason like the taste of antifreeze and they tend to chew up radiator hoses. It may be wise to put a wire fence around your car as some people have done to keep the marmots away from the car.
Dad actually stood guard (while Mom and I went to get closer to this waterfall) making sure the marmots didn't chew away at our radiator hose. And on the drive out of here, we saw trails of antifreeze probably from some poor soul who had his car's radiator hose chewed through and leaked the stuff.
Directions: The falls sits right at the mouth of Mineral King Valley. To get here, you first have to get to the town of Three Rivers, which is near Visalia on Hwy 198. About 2.5 miles east of Three Rivers is the Mineral King Road. Turn right onto the road and follow this mostly narrow and unpaved road right into Sawtooth Parking area barely a half-mile from the road's end.
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