Today's adventure takes us to Mist Falls [map], out in the Columbia Gorge -- although "Mystery Falls" might be a better name for it. It's just down the road from Multnomah, Wahkeena, and all the others, and by all accounts, it's the second-highest waterfall there after Multnomah (although sources disagree on just how tall it actually is). For all that, almost nobody knows it’s there. It doesn’t have a large official sign at the trailhead like the others do. It doesn’t even appear on many maps of the area. If you've read this blog before, you know I can't resist a mystery like that. I'm going to wonder why, and keep wondering, and not be able to rest until I find out, because that's just how I am.
I’d vaguely heard of Mist Falls before, since it's mentioned in the print and online versions of the Waterfall Lover's Guide to the Pacific Northwest, but the guide doesn't tell you exactly where it is, or what it looks like, and for some reason rates it a mere one star, down in the "not worth turning your head to see" category. Then when I was digging around for info for Monday's gorge waterfall post, I ran across more info about the falls, and I just had to go find the place.
The crib note version of the falls: They're just west of Wahkeena Falls, are as much as 500 feet high, and do, in fact, run year-round, despite popular misconceptions to the contrary. And there's a trail up to the base of the falls, although the trail's hard to find, and difficult to navigate once you find it.
I figured I'd start out with a link dump about the falls. I researched the place on the net before setting out, so doing a link dump first is sort of going in chronological order. (Don't worry, there's more pics after the link farm. I don't really like how the waterfall pics are bunched up towards the bottom of the page, but that's how the piece wrote itself. If you just want to look at more photos, the scrolly wheel is your friend.)
This is one of the tallest waterfall in Oregon State, however, due to the creek's small drainage area, they are not very appreciated. The falls usually retain some volume throughout the year, however, they do run almost dry in the late summer, and may dry out in drought years.
The timbered lands below Mist Falls, which is over 1000 feet high and which borders the highway, were sold for $7 and $8 an acre -- and logged.
MIST FALLS, 159.8 m., where the water drops from a 1,200 foot escarpment were thus mentioned by Lewis and Clark: "Down from these heights frequently descend the most beautiful cascades, one of which [now Multnomah Falls] throws itself over a perpendicular rock. . . . while other smaller streams precipitate themselves from a still greater elevation, and evaporating in mist, again collect and form a second cascade before they reach the bottom of the rocks."
Then comes Mist Falls, where a great body of water is driven to near-nothingness before it reaches the bottom of a cliff, 1500 feet below.
A mile east of Shepperd's Dell, the Bridal Veil shimmers like the Staubbach, the Dust-brook of Switzerland, and three miles more, Mist Falls leaps like Nuuanu stream back of Honolulu, to be dissipated and blown into space long before reaching the waters below.
Out of Punchbowl Crater, 1300 feet deep, springs Wahkeena, full panoplied like Minerva springing from the head of Jove, winged with foam and bubbles, cutting huge gorges on its way to the Columbia, a roaring cataract, tumbling, foaming, spouting icy-cold as the underground glacier in which it has its birth.
THE PEOPLE OF OREGON HEREBY EXPRESS THEIR GRATITUDE TO ROSE M. LENSKE FOR THE DONATION OF THIS FIVE ACRE TRACT OF LAND FOR PARK PURPOSES -------- OREGON STATE HIGHWAY COMMISSION 1971So apparently Mist Falls is actually a super-obscure state park. Coolness. Tracking down obscure parks is another weird mini-hobby of mine, so Mist Falls counts as a twofer. So who was Rose Lenske, and what's the deal with the rock walls around here?
Multnomah Lodge is three and one half miles beyond Bridal Veil, a delightful hostelry, where visitors find both cheer and the fullest satisfaction of ordinary physical needs. Mist falls is a mere filament of water, so slender that before half of its sheer drop of near a thousand feet is made, it is none else than a spray of mist—hence its name.
So why is the place so obscure? Why aren't there any signs -- for the falls, the trail, the state park (whatever it's called)? Why is the only trail an unmaintained use path? Why all this, when the other falls along the highway all have first class visitor facilities? I have a few theories:
First off, many of the sites that bother to mention the falls at all give a disclaimer that there isn't a lot of water, even though there was when I visited. Possibly it does go dry in dryer years, or possibly it's just a meme that goes around. Interestingly, the older mentions of the falls don't give the low-volume disclaimer. Was there more water once? Global warming, perhaps?
So some people think the falls fail to impress because of their lower volume. I don't buy that, myself. Any amount of water falling 500 (or 400, or 1500) feet is innately impressive, especially in this setting. I gather waterfall purists (and they do exist) turn up their noses at anything that goes dry, or nearly dry, in the summer. Even if Mist Falls did dry up in the summer like nearby Dalton Falls , so what? Then you'd just want to visit some other time of the year. If it's flowing while you're there, why do you really care whether it dries up for a few weeks six months down the road? Silly purists. Feh.
Second, the present trail is really freakin' steep and narrow, and can be scary when wet. The trails at other falls around the gorge are pretty newbie-friendly, so if you just put up a big sign and didn't change the trail, there'd be trouble. At Multnomah Falls it's not uncommon to see people strolling up the trail, latte in one hand, the leash of an exitable Lab puppy in the other, yapping away to their broker or somebody on their hands-free Bluetooth headset, utterly oblivious to their surroundings. Try doing that on the Mist Falls trail and you're in for a rude and possibly painful surprise.
I'm sure they could put in switchbacks, stable surfaces, handrails and such. Building trails isn't rocket science. It's just a simple matter of throwing enough money at the problem. Unfortunately, since the state owns the land, finding said money would be an epic adventure. For all I know, Mist Falls has been in the pending queue for improvements since 1971, waiting for funds to become available someday. It wouldn't really be fair of me to make fun of the state for not having any money. Still a real shame, though.
Third, obscurity breeds obscurity. If you don't know the falls are there, you don't visit, and you don't lobby for or make improvements. If all the other falls have nice amenities, and this one doesn't, you naturally assume there's a good reason, and it's not worth fussing over the place.
Much of today's infrastructure in the gorge still dates back to the building of the Gorge Highway or shortly thereafter. At that time, and until 1971, the Mist Falls area was in private hands and so didn't get all the fancy stonework and trail engineering and such that the others got. Mist Falls wasn't in line when the goodies were handed out, nearly a century ago, and there hasn't been a second round of handing out goodies, so therefore it doesn't have them. Thus illustrating why it's good to get it right the first time, because you never know if or when you'll get another chance.
A few months ago, I did a post about public stairs in NW Portland, in which I semi-promised you the post you're now reading:
From here, the hike directions usually send you up Luray Terrace and into Macleay Park, from where you loop back around down into NW Portland. That's sort of what I did too, but I'm trying to keep this post reasonably focused on stairs, if I can. I've got park photos too, but we'll save those for another post, ok?
So these pics are from Macleay Park, up in the West Hills, some from the popular trail along Balch Creek, and others from the obscure chunk of the park south of Cornell, where a few trails winding around in the forest, eventually ending up at the Pittock Mansion if you go far enough south. The southern section is perhaps not as scenic as the stretch of park along Balch Creek, but there are also far less people there. If you just want to get away from the crowds for a while, this is a decent area for it.
The first photo is of the famous Stone House ruins, not far from the Balch Creek entrance to the park. Some people think it looks creepy and it's been nicknamed the "Witch's Castle", but the true story is less exciting, or at least less supernatural. It was actually built in the 1930s as a public restroom, believe it or not. It looks like this because the federal Works Progress Administration built it, and the Northwest branch loved building everything out of stone, in a very distinctive style. They did this for showpiece projects like Timberline Lodge, as well as mundane stuff like the flood control works along Johnson Creek at Tideman Johnson Park, and public restrooms like the ones here. Apparently the building was abandoned after the 1962 Columbus Day Storm damaged it, and it's fallen into picturesque ruin over the last half century.
If you look at a trail map of the park, you'll see something called the "Tunnel Trail". I took it, but it turns out to be much less exciting than it sounds. It's a short cutoff trail that heads down to one of the road tunnels on Cornell, which you can't (or at least shouldn't) walk through as a pedestrian, even if you like tunnels as much as I do. There's a separate pedestrian path that bypasses the tunnel, but at least you do get a look at the old WPA-era stonework, if you're into that sort of thing.
Scanning through the slideshow, you might notice that it has a high percentage of closeup shots. It's not that I didn't take any photos with wide vistas of the forest, it's just that I didn't care for most of them. It's a nice walk, but the forest it passes through is fairly generic, with the usual uber-Northwestern assortment of ferns, moss, fir trees, slugs, and so on, along with the same invasive species you see in other "natural area" type parks around the city, primarily ivy and blackberries.
Three tree totems with poetry written by students at Ockley Green Middle School surround a small plaza.
