Day 23 – The Trail of Ten Falls

After all our hiking around Glacier and Banff, I discovered that my tennis shoes were a little out of sorts.

I tried some two sided Gorilla Tape on it and that didn’t work real well so we found a Famous Footwear in Yakima yesterday and corrected my problem.

So I’m all ready for hiking the “Trail of Ten Falls”.  It’s a 7 mile loop around a canyon here.  What I didn’t understand is that the trail was 100 yards of downhill and 6.9 miles of climbing. 

We arrive at the first falls, South Falls.

The trail runs 180° around the falls giving us several vantage points.

Including one from behind the falls.

The trees here all appear to be old growth cedar and pine.  The trees are straight as an arrow and a hundred feet tall, give or take.  It reminds me of the Hartwick Pines of Michigan.

There’s not a whole lot of water running down the stream bed now, but it sure is a lush valley compared to the dried out landscape of the rest of the west we’ve been to so far.  There is a burning ban here so no one is allowed to build a campfire. 

The second falls we get to is the Lower South Falls. 

This is another falls that has a trail behind the falls.

It’s a scenic spot.

The rocks in the stream bed here don’t offer the color that we saw in the Rockies.

Next is the Lower North Falls.  The falls naming committee here certainly didn’t get real creative.

Access here is limited so the view is somewhat restricted.

Fourth is Double Falls.  It’s not much more than a wet rock at this point.

There is a little water running over the cliff.

The fifth falls we passed is the Drake Falls.

Again, there wasn’t any access to view these very well.

Next, was Double Falls.

That’s about as good a view as we could get.

Finally was North Falls.

This was another falls that had a path behind the falls in kind of a cave like space.

We saw seven of the ten falls.  If it weren’t so dry, it would make a more spectacular show.  The trail is a ton of uphill walking.  I don’t think it would matter much which way around the loop you traveled.  Between the first two falls we went down a staircase of perhaps 100 feet.  I was glad I was on the down route at that point, but we may have paid all that advantage back later in the hike.

So that’s a wrap on Silver Falls State Park.

We’re going to the beach tomorrow.