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canyonwalkerIn my previous blog I wrote about hiking to Kentucky Falls in the coastal mountains west of Eugene, Oregon. I remarked that if all I did was get to Kentucky Falls and turn around, it would've been a decent hike. But I didn't turn around there. I went over a mile further (and several hundred vertical feet lower) to reach more falls.
Kentucky Creek plunges over a falls even more dramatic than the first one on the trail. This is Lower Kentucky Falls. There's a nice wooden viewing platform here. Some younger people scrambled up the slippery rocks to the pool below the lowest tier of the falls. You can see one of them in the photo above.
If you "zoom out" on the view from the wooden platform you see something else, too....
There's another fairly tall falls right next to Lower Kentucky Falls. The one on the left is Smith Creek Falls. The two creek plunge over the same rocky ledge then merge together just below it.
While I didn't feel like joining the younger adults scrambling up to the base of Lower Kentucky Falls, I did decide to scramble downstream to the confluence of the two creeks and then up to the base of Smith Creek Falls.
My inspiration for doing this was two-fold. First, I remembered some of the waterfalls in Oahu (Hawaii) we visited last year, where the trail basically disappeared the last 100 meters of the way and we had to boulder-bash our way up the creek. This was no worse than that. Second, as I started downstream to judge if it was worth continuing, my sunglasses slipped off and fell down an 8' tall drop. They landed atop a rock, so they weren't lost in the water. But at that point I figured, "In for a penny, in for a pound," and decided to go the whole way.
I picked my way carefully and found plenty of rocks and logs in the creeks to make my way down to the confluence and up the other creek to the base of Smith Creek Falls, without getting my feet wet. "Will it be worth the effort?" I wondered as I started. When I got to the point where I took the photo above, it totally was. ...Okay, recovering my sunglasses was worth the effort. I hate having to buy new sunglasses. The views were gravy.
In beauty I walk.
Kentucky Creek plunges over a falls even more dramatic than the first one on the trail. This is Lower Kentucky Falls. There's a nice wooden viewing platform here. Some younger people scrambled up the slippery rocks to the pool below the lowest tier of the falls. You can see one of them in the photo above.
If you "zoom out" on the view from the wooden platform you see something else, too....
There's another fairly tall falls right next to Lower Kentucky Falls. The one on the left is Smith Creek Falls. The two creek plunge over the same rocky ledge then merge together just below it.
While I didn't feel like joining the younger adults scrambling up to the base of Lower Kentucky Falls, I did decide to scramble downstream to the confluence of the two creeks and then up to the base of Smith Creek Falls.
My inspiration for doing this was two-fold. First, I remembered some of the waterfalls in Oahu (Hawaii) we visited last year, where the trail basically disappeared the last 100 meters of the way and we had to boulder-bash our way up the creek. This was no worse than that. Second, as I started downstream to judge if it was worth continuing, my sunglasses slipped off and fell down an 8' tall drop. They landed atop a rock, so they weren't lost in the water. But at that point I figured, "In for a penny, in for a pound," and decided to go the whole way.
I picked my way carefully and found plenty of rocks and logs in the creeks to make my way down to the confluence and up the other creek to the base of Smith Creek Falls, without getting my feet wet. "Will it be worth the effort?" I wondered as I started. When I got to the point where I took the photo above, it totally was. ...Okay, recovering my sunglasses was worth the effort. I hate having to buy new sunglasses. The views were gravy.
In beauty I walk.
