Hiking the Trail of Ten Falls

This morning we woke up to a tiny bit of sun and blue sky (!!!!). We decided it WAS the day to do the Trail of Ten Falls hike after all. Just as we were dressed, breakfasted, hand-on-the-door-handle ready to go…guess what? It started raining. Oh well. Onward! What's a 10 mile hike in the rain? We have Gore-Tex, and all weather trail shoes, and resolve. 

We walked from the campground up to South Falls and started there. (Warning: this post is going to have several photos of waterfalls.)

Behind South Falls:

I took a photo of each of the ten waterfalls, but I'll only post the most interesting ones. We saw all ten, plus a few that probably don't count. I don't think this one counts or has a name, but it's pretty isn't it?

I love when the trail goes behind several of the waterfalls…usually a narrow rocky path with a low ceiling (and tons of spray from the falls…but no worse than the rain, really):

In the photo below you can see the trail coming out from under the falls on the right side of the image. Gives you an idea of the scale, doesn't it?

You can tell by the color temp of the photos how dark and kinda dreary the weather was. Regardless, it was still lovely.

Starting at South Falls you descend down into the canyon to the aptly named Canyon Trail. This trail follows alongside the river past Lower South Falls, Lower North Falls, Double Falls, Drake Falls, Middle North Falls, Twin Falls, ending up at North Falls. It's a gorgeous, very satisfyingly scenic hike, even in the rain:

Double Falls:

Approaching North Falls:

Behind North Falls:

Then you  head up to the top of North Falls where there's an out-and-back (.2 miles out, .2 back) to see Waterfall No. 10: Upper North Falls.

Upper North Falls:

Then you hook up with the Rim Trail that takes you back along the other side of the canyon, up high, past Winter Falls, and eventually back to the campground. All in all we hiked about 11 miles, but the trail itself–if you parked at a trailhead and wanted to see all 10 waterfalls–is just under 9 miles I believe.

The Rim Trail headed back to our campground:

Silver Falls State Park is Oregon's largest state park. It's about 9000 acres of temperate rain forest and there are many other trails besides the Trail of Ten Falls (but that one is definitely one of the most popular hikes!). 

Now we're warming up in the Airstream, and we'll probably watch some more House of Cards pretty soon. Kevin's going to cook  some chicken on the Traeger for dinner tonight, and I'll roast some asparagus and make an arugula salad as our sides. I'm so happy we got that hike in today! (It offsets some of those stuffed jalapeños and burgers we had last night for dinner!) 🙂