Last week I covered my flight to and from Oregon. As my first flight, it was absolutely gorgeous, but the things I got to see while there in Oregon were on another level.
Anyone who has followed my photography over the years will know I have an affinity for waterfalls. This isn’t anything special, as most landscape photographers do. But it made my visit to Silver Falls State Park that much more memorable.
This state park has made a run for National Park status before, and I can say after visiting, it certainly deserves it. It contains numerous waterfalls, 10 of which are considered major and fall on the “trail of ten falls.” I saw nine of the 10 while on my trip. In addition, plentiful snowmelt had a lot of extra smaller falls going.
As soon as I parked, I could hear the first waterfall down below. It was still quite dark when I shot this image, but Winter Falls was an absolutely spectacular way to start the day. As a plus, I only had to walk about three minutes downhill to see it.
Past Winter Falls, I followed the trail down to begin a loop that would take me to the rest of the major falls. I quickly came upon one that wasn’t marked on my map. The rushing stream below me caught my eye first, but I could see a nice fall up above me.
Words cannot describe how incredibly green this region is. Everything is covered in moss, which gives the entire landscape a green vibe. We have plenty of green in Northeast Georgia during the summertime, but the year-round moss growing in the Pacific Northwest is amazing. Even many of the trees are carpeted in green.
Weather conditions couldn’t have been better for water photography. In addition to the early morning keeping things from being too bright, some clouds and sprinkles helped make these long exposures really pop.
I continued on past this fall and, within minutes, found yet another off-trail fall looming above me. This one was almost certainly not there year-round, but I found myself making my way up the steep, moss-covered slope to grab a shot while it allowed. This one was quite a bit taller than this picture makes it appear.
Beyond these falls, I came to the first truly insane waterfall of the day: North Falls.
Here on the East Coast, a lot of our waterfalls are the same. Outside of Tennessee and a handful in the northeast, most of our falls don’t have very long single drops. They tumble down on rocks on their journey to the river below but usually do so in a less direct way. There are a half dozen falls in this state park that are well over 100 feet high. North Falls is one of them. The sounds of the water were louder than any I had ever heard. The water level being up from the snowmelt added to the power and the early morning mist and spray laid out a scene straight from a fairy tale below.
This is one of several falls you can also walk behind. The cover image from this post was taken from behind these incredible falls.
I saw many more falls on this trip, but we’ll get to those next week.
I’ll see you on the trail…
