Hardy Falls

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Here's another installment in my late and somewhat disorganized series about Hamilton Mountain, on the Washington side of the Columbia Gorge. Hardy Falls is the first waterfall you encounter, before you get to Rodney Falls / Pool of the Winds, and the expansive viewpoints further up the trail. It's not really the main event of the hike, and you don't get a good view of the falls from the trail. The only viewpoint gives you a distant view of the falls from above and off to one side, so you get meh photos like the one here. You may get the colors and exposure better than I did (the first photo was taken with a crappy point-n-shoot camera back in 2007), but you'll be taking the same basic shot, because it's the only one. Officially.

That said, I've seen photos floating around the net that are obviously taken from somewhere else, apparently down near the base of the falls. I have no idea how you'd get there, though. The terrain suggests it would be a steep and dangerous scramble, and the photographers behind these photos never seem to include a description that lets us in on the secret. I mean, if it involves bushwhacking through thickets of poison oak or rappelling down into a ravine or something I probably wouldn't do it even if I could find instructions. As a young Cub Scout it was constantly drummed into me to always stay on the official marked trail, otherwise you're causing erosion and stomping on poor innocent plants and making Woodsy the Owl cry and so forth.

Hamilton Mountain

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Here are a few photos from Hamilton Mountain, on the Washington side of the Columbia Gorge, just east of Beacon Rock. These photos were taken back in 2007 and some have already appeared here in posts about Rodney Falls / Pool of the Winds and flowers along the Hamilton Mountain trail. I also took a bunch of scenic photos from some high cliffs along the trail, but I never got around to posting them back then. I recently remembered I had them and dug them out of the archives, so here they are. I've already talked about the hike in those two previous posts, plus the post about Dry Creek Falls which I visited later the same day. So I won't go into a lot of additional depth here, in large part because it's been six years now and I mostly just remember the highlights at this point. Luckily there's info about the hike on the interwebs, including Portland Hikers' Field Guide, LocalHikes.com, and the Washington Trails Association, if the photos make you want to check the place out. The funny thing is that the parking lot trailhead gives you two trails to choose from, and they're labeled "Difficult" and "More Difficult". If I remember right this was from "Difficult", because "More Difficult" didn't hit the waterfalls along the trail. I could have that backwards though. I know I took the trail to the waterfalls, whatever the label was. That much I'm quite sure of.

The overlook these photos are taken from is an interesting place, with a great 180+ degree view of an especially scenic part of the Columbia Gorge. You come across it rather suddenly too: You're slogging away through a long stretch of typical Northwest forest, then you come around a corner, and suddenly there are these rugged rock outcrops, and beyond them a cliff dropping several hundred feet. Or at least this is how I remember it from 2007. There are a few well-worn paths out onto the outcrop area, from decades of people trying to look daring, or just trying to get a better photo. I didn't follow these all the way to the cliff's edge; I'm not afraid of heights in general, but heights plus a lack of any solid handholds tends to make me a bit anxious. It doesn't happen a lot, either. Ran into it here, in Yosemite, and at Saddle Mountain. This time I approached it as an experiment: See how far I could go before it began to seem like a bad idea. (Answer: Not very far.) Then take a step back, wait, see if I can go a bit further. That helped a bit, though I still hit NOPE.GIF territory well before the actual edge. So I think I'm going to chalk that up to having survival-oriented DNA, coming from a long line of not-falling-off-cliffs people, and leave it there.

The upside here is that I ended up with bits of foreground scenery in the photos too, which I'm told adds visual interest. If anyone asks (obviously other than you guys, o Gentle Reader(s)), I'll just pretend I did it that way on purpose.

The Pool of the Winds

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A few pics of "The Pool of the Winds", a little spot out in the Gorge with a melodramatic name straight out of a cheesy fantasy novel. It's an upper segment of Rodney Falls, on the Washington side near Beacon Rock. The water's carved sort of a bowl, almost a cylinder, into the rock. The water falls in from the top, spilling around a log that somehow ended up here. The water and mist rush out of a narrow gap in one side, and the rough cylindrical shape seems to amplify the noise.

This post has been lurking in my 'drafts' pile for quite a while (as in "3 months to the day"), for a couple of reasons. First, I'm not really thrilled with these photos. The only viewpoint is right next to the pool, and my little point-n-shoot digicam isn't wide-angle enough to capture things properly. I either didn't have my handy wide-angle conversion lens with me, or I hadn't bought it yet. I don't recall clearly now, but I think it was the latter, which got me on the path of buying all sorts of photo doodads. So I guess I may have the pool to thank for that.

If you'd like to see some better photos than these, here are a few I ran across on the interwebs: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. And here's a video clip if you're interested.

Second, besides the photos, I don't really have all that much to say about the place. It's a short spur off the trail up Hamilton Mountain, so it's probably worth a quick look if you're there anyway. I saw the name "Pool of Winds" (the 'the' seems to be optional) while trolling the interwebs and decided I had to go check it out. And really the name's the best part, as it turns out. In fact, further up the trail I remembered I'd actually been to Hamilton Mountain before, years ago, and the Pool of Winds just really wasn't that memorable. Oh, well. Great name, though. It's got that, at least.

So without further ado or delay, here are a few assorted links about the place.

• A page at dwlz.com, with lots of photos.
• Info at localhikes.com
• Oregon Hikers' Field Guide has pages on Hamilton Mountain and The Pool itself.
• Waterfalls Northwest
• TrailsNW
• NWHikers.net
• A post at rainy day knits
• Oh, here's another video clip. I found it was easiest to save locally and play from there, but YMMV.

photo friday hits the road

Yep, it's time for yet another batch of flowers and berries and leaves, this time from a few spots around the Columbia Gorge. The first 5 pics are from along the trail at Hamilton Mountain, on the Washington side near Beacon Rock. The next two are from Portland Womens' Forum State Park, and the last is from the Vista House on Crown Point. All three places are most famous for their broad panoramic vistas, but we're sticking with the small stuff today, because it's always good to have a theme, or so I've heard.