So based on our observations and experiences, I can definitely say that you'll want to come in the early to mid morning when the sun might shine right into the waterfall while lighting up the scenic mountains in front of you (including Red Mountain and White Mountain) as you do this hike along McGee Creek. Not only that, it tends to be a little cooler in the morning, which makes this 4-mile round trip hike more bearable as the trail is mostly free of shade.

I don't think many people do this excursion as a short day-hike to the waterfall. It seems like people who visit McGee Creek typically go on horseback and continue onwards towards many lakes further up the canyon. Without horseback, it's a long hike just to even get to Steelhead Lake (the first of the lakes we noticed on the map beyond Horsetail Falls).

From the car park, we were immediately confronted with a fork in the trail - one upper and one lower. Fortunately, it didn't matter which one we took because they eventually converged further along the trail. It's just that the lower trail seemed flatter (it even splits along the way before converging again) until it eventually had to go up switchbacks to rejoin the upper trail. The upper trail seemed like a natural path to take on the return, which might explain why there were multiple trails all going to the same place.

Just beyond the convergence of the lower and upper trails, we entered the Inyo National Forest officially as there was a signpost nearby. From this point onwards, the terrain was more vegetated but still quite exposed to sunlight.

Eventually after an hour or so of hiking mostly uphill, we could see both Red and White Mountains looming large in front of us. I guess we could tell why they were given those names as we could see some oxidation on the surface of Red Mountain while White Mountain had that bare granite appearance right behind it. Eventually, we could see part of the waterfall on the approach, but before we could get a closer look, we had to cross Horsetail Creek.

In high flow, I could imagine we had to get our feet wet in order to get across the pair of creek crossings. When we were last there in August 2010, the creek still had July-like flows so we employed a combination of rock-hopping on the first stream crossing and were glad to have gore-tex boots for the second crossing.

A short distance beyond the stream crossing, there was an unsigned scrambling path to our right which climbed uphill towards a sun-exposed area where we could get closer views of Horsetail Falls. We couldn't find a way to get all the way to the base of the main waterfall as the scrambling got rougher and the foliage got thicker, but the views from the sun-exposed area was good enough for us.

On the way back, we got to look forward to the fact that it was all downhill. Just to give you an idea of how taxing the uphill climb to get here could be, it took us almost 90 minutes to go the 2 miles in. But it barely took us an hour to make it all the way back to the car park.