Horsetail Falls

I've been going out to the Columbia River Gorge alot lately to go hiking on all the great trails along the river. I say alot, because since the Angel's Rest hike (which wasn't even 2 weeks ago) I've done 3 more hikes. I chose a fairly easy loop trail to do today, because I had a time limit and wanted it to be my first solo hike (with Steve of course). However, my friend James, who always works, had the day off, so I let him tag along (just joshin' with ya, james! WINK).  We headed out fairly early and after finally figuring out how to get out of Portland from his end of town, we were off into the wilderness and arrived at the trail head, which is probably a mile past Multnomah Falls, around 9am. The trail is a 4 mile loop....supposedly. It was definitely a loop, but the bottom of the loop was a bit disconnected. When we go to the bottom of the loop we had to walk along the highway to get back to the starting trailhead where we left the car. This was only maybe a half mile walk or less, so nothing too terrible. Plus, we founds some CRAZY animal bones along the road...fairly substantial in size, yet it looked like there were turkey waddles connected to the jaw area, but also fur found on some of the carcass. Conclusion: a turkey wearing a fur coat!!! Too bad it go hit by a car. 

 

(I'm not sure what the name of the fall on the left is. The fall on the Right is Horsetail Falls, and is visible from the highway.)

This hike only has an elevation gain of 560ft, but there are still a couple of decent viewpoints along the way (nothing as thrilling as other higher elevation hikes though, like Devil's and Angel's Rest). With the lack of elevation, it's nice that this is still a 4 mile hike, which makes it more worth it for me. If I'm going to do an easy hike, I still want there to be a bit of distance.

Like the other hikes in the area, this one has a bit of a rocky trail (as my hipster friend quickly noticed in his thin soled fashionable shoes:) The forest is lush and beautiful, lots of moss on the trees and slugs on the ground.

I let James in on a little secret; if you lick this slug your tongue will get numb. Yes, I have tried it before and it does work, but I couldn't remember what kind of slug. This one had leopard spots. Perhaps it's the right kind, perhaps I poisoned James! Either way, he spit about 30 times and caused quite a scene, but then licked it again when I said a photo would be a good idea. The slug left his hands covered in gluey goop and we decided to use this glue when the apocalypse happens and we need to build a forest home.

 We found this monument in the woods near a whole slough of lookouts. We don't know the exact cliff that poor little Glenn fell from, but I asked James to feel out the different ledges and he said that this one felt like a pretty legit place to fall and die from. Poor James was REALLY uncomfortable out there.

Halfway through the loop there is a fall that the trail goes right behind. There is a big cave-like cove cut out from the huge rock under the waterfall, where the trail goes. Quite cool! I think this might be Ponytail Falls.

Like most of the other hikes in this area, this hike has forks where you can follow trails that connect to other trails, thus making this hike as long as you want really. Maybe next times I'll take one of the trail offshoots and see what kind of beautiful things I find. Alone as a loop, this is a very nice relaxing hike.