Winter at Dalton Falls

A few photos of icy Dalton Falls, out in the Columbia Gorge, taken earlier this morning. If you've never heard of Dalton Falls (and most people haven't), you might want to check out an earlier post of mine here, which is where I keep my slim supply of useful info about the place.

Driving out there this morning was only a moderately bad idea, as it turns out. It's not true, strictly speaking, that many Bothans died to bring you this information. There was a bit of sleet coming down now and then, but mostly it was just very cold rain, so that was ok, I guess. I came across the site of an earlier accident on the Gorge highway, but the tow truck had it cleared within minutes of when I got there, and I didn't have to wait long. So that was ok too, or at least it was for me. And the falls were running for once and properly iced up, just as I'd hoped, and some of the photos turned out reasonably ok, or at least semi-fixable in GIMP. (I took a few more with the old Spotmatic, so we'll see how those come out when I have the film developed.) After taking these pics, I then had to scurry back into town for an important meeting with the PHBs. I almost missed it, but didn't, so that was ok as well -- although all things considered, I think I'd rather take "semi-fixable in GIMP" photos in 33-degree sleet than talk to a bunch of clueless PHBs again. All in all, nothing terrible happened this time around. Although I should point out before anyone else does that deliberately driving out to the Gorge while a winter storm watch is in effect is really sort of sub-brilliant. And the drive wasn't my idea of a good time, exactly. Wasn't much fun at all, actually. Yech.

Now that I'm here in my nice, toasty cubicle, with nice, toasty interweb access, I see that oil now costs over $100/barrel. I'm not even going to speculate about a dollar value on this morning's little foray, but under the circumstances I probably won't make a weekly habit of it.

There's another recent photo of the falls (albeit without ice) in this OregonHikers thread. One commenter actually links to my Dalton Falls post as a source of good info, which just goes to show how scarce authoritative info is about the place.

For future reference, the falls are just uphill from milepost 31 (above) on the old Columbia Gorge highway. If you find the milepost and don't see a waterfall directly uphill, the waterfall's gone dry and you'll need to come back some other time.

Above & below, a couple of variations on a "wintry grimness" theme, at the mini-parking lot for the falls. You'd almost think I'd been to art school or something.

The falls from inside a nice, warm car.