Elevation Gain: Approximately 1000 ft
Time: 8:15 am - 2:00 pm
Weather: Mostly cloudy, with small sun breaks, no rain :)
I woke up in Portland this morning at 6:15 am. I had traveled down Thursday evening with the Mathematics Department from my school to attend the 50th Northwest Mathematics Conference on Friday. My department chair and I planned a hike for the Saturday following the conference. He is a good friend who is section hiking the PCT and has been on multiple hikes with me in the last year. He had a perfect hike in mind. The hike followed Eagle Creek in the Columbia River Gorge. It was only an hour from the hotel and was supposed to have beautiful waterfalls along the trail. We were geared up and were ready to hike at 8:15 am.
The morning was overcast to start, but there were glimpses of sunshine to the east. The trail starts off at a nice gradual slope and never gets too daunting. The creek below provided a nice background to some great trail conversations with my friend. We made it up to the Lower Punchbowl Falls but choose to walk on up the trail to the destination, Tunnel Falls, another 3.5 miles up the trail. We walked at a quick pace, but we did not feel like we were racing. At 10:10 am, the falls were coming into view. The falls were quite awesome, and I was pleased with how quickly we got there. We both felt like moving on up the trail aways, so we were moving after just a few minutes. Another 10 minutes up the trail, we came around the wall of a cliff and were greeted by the best view of the whole day. The creek was spread out over a wide expanse and was draining hundreds of feet below.
We kept walking another 10 minutes and saw a trail marker indicating we were 7 miles up the trail. We thought it better to eat lunch by the falls, so we turned around and stopped for a 30 minute lunch break on the trail. We saw two people before we were up and moving at Tunnel Falls. We began walking out at 11:45. The walk out was jam packed with us passing people on their way in, lots of people with their dogs and wearing jeans. We got down to the Punchbowl Falls turn off, and we decided to go take a look. Another spectacular falls awaited us when we got down to the end of the trail. There was a nice little crowd gathered around the creek eating below Punchbowl. We took off and were back at the car by 2:00 pm.
Orchid: Unexpected highlight view of the creek above Tunnel Falls.
Onion: Sore feet.
Picture:
Google Map
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