Hooray For Nature!
One of the worst things about not having a car is that it's very easy to become trapped in the city. Which is made even more horrible in Portland, as it's surrounded by a lot of natural beauty which I'd love to be able to see on a more regular basis. So it was a wonderful day on Sunday when our friend Spencer rang me and asked if I'd like to go on a hike in the Columbia River Gorge. Would I? Heck, yeah!
Now I've been up to the Gorge twice, once with Christine's dad, and once with my parents. Both times we've taken in the views and waterfalls that are located near to the highway (Latourell, Multnomah, etc), so I was pretty excited to have to walk through this beautiful area to see some of the slightly more remote waterfalls.
Spence took me to one of the most popular hiking spots in the Gorge, the Eagle Creek trail, which leads up to the renowned Punch Bowl Falls - about a 4 mile return journey. The path itself was quite difficult, often gouged out of a sheer cliff face. The cliff face itself was home to many intermittent waterfalls, meaning we got an impromptu shower as we passed underneath! Here's a picture, showing the steel cable handrail embedded into the cliff; there's probably a 100-foot drop to the river below at this point.
The path settles down into a more normal hiking trail after this exciting beginning, but going was still difficult thanks to ice and snow covering the path occasionally. The scenery was beautiful, including some very tall and arrow-straight trees, all trying to grow as high as possible as quickly as possible. Light is a limited commodity in this narrow gorge!
Finally, we reached our destination, Punch Bowl Falls. There are actually two sets of falls, the creatively named "Lower" and "Upper" falls. Our first stop was the Lower Falls, a short 10 foot drop only, but still a lovely sight. I was glad I had brought my tripod all the way with me, as hand-held shots would have been almost impossible in the gloomy gorge.
Just upstream of here is a rocky beach that Spencer told me is very popular in Summer, when people come here to swim and relax. Sounds great! People also wade out into the stream to take pictures of the Upper Falls upstream, a classic and iconic waterfall photo. However, late-winter water is a little too cold to be trying that trick at the moment! A reason to return in Summer, though!
So we had to retrace our steps to the main path and continue on a bit until we got to the lookout over the main falls:
A spectacular sight as torrents of water spilled over the cliff into the huge bowl-shaped pond... apparently, these falls gave their name to this class of waterfall (they're the original punch bowl falls, so to speak) and I doubt there's a better example anywhere.
Posted in: chaosboy, hiking, nature, photography on February 11, 2008 at at 4:59:00 PM