I meant to take it easy. I meant to hike the short hike to Franklin Falls because I went running the day before and my legs were a bit leaden, and then go home. But that’s not what I did. Instead, I thought to myself, “Weeeeell, I’m already here, so I may as well do the other trail that starts here and see both waterfalls!”
The weather was changeable and fast moving. We were getting rain off and on the whole time, both trails, and I found myself trying to assess if I actually needed a rain jacket at least a dozen times. One moment, the trees were covered in fog, the next moment, you’d see a crack of sunlight. Usually right as it started raining, so it was a constant game of wiping off the lens.
These are rental cabins from what I can tell, dotted throughout the forest near the trailhead. Some behind locked gates, so I imagine when you rent them, you get notified about how to unlock them. I do not recall seeing power lines, just firewood and beautiful surroundings.
If I was the type of photographer to walk around with a tripod, I would have been able to blend the shot above with another where they were posing for the camera in a much more aesthetically pleasing way… but I’m not that type of photographer and likely never will be.
I finished the Franklin Falls trail and it was only 10am. I’d driven over an hour to get here. It just seemed like such a waste to already be here and not check out the other trail that led from the parking lot to Keekwulee Falls. In truth, the trail I took also went on further to a lake, but that would have added another 1600 ft of elevation gain on top of the 1600 I was already doing that I hadn’t entirely planned for. I’ll have to tackle that one at a future date.
It was right about this time that the fast moving clouds began to show some sunlight and blue sky. The speed with which the landscape was changing was insane, with entire mountains appearing and then disappearing again, often within the span of a minute or two.
Picture on the left was as I was going up the mountain, and the picture on the right is when I was coming back down. The difference between them is that it was drizzling quite intensely on the way down, and the fog was starting to envelop the valley. The blue sky would not return. Instead, I would get chased down the mountain by increasingly insistent rainfall.
The picture below is just because I’m utterly in love with how green the PNW is.
Views like this feel very alpine, but we were nowhere near that kind of elevation.
