JkbWorld

On Day 5 (Thursday 7/29/2010), we awoke to hear the rushing water of Eagle Creek.  We packed up our gear and headed out for the remaining 7 1/2 miles from 7 1/2 mile campground toward our triumphant finish at the Eagle Creek trailhead.  About a half mile beyond the campsite, we encountered Seven Mile Falls.

Brian, with his trusty Stick-Pic, was ready with an update.

Brian was anxious and excited to see the much-hyped waterfalls along Eagle Creek…

…and I don’t think he was disappointed!  Twister Falls was very exciting, with 3-layers of waterfall followed by a 100+ foot drop down to the pool down below.  The picture is high resolution, so you can also click into it for more detail.

You can see the two other layers of Twister Falls and then where the falls gets its name where the water crosses paths around that rock, I guess causing a twisting effect?  Either way, it was cool.

Here is Brian’s video of Twister Falls and the trail beyond.

Next, we got to Tunnel Falls, which may have been even cooler!  This is also a 100+ foot drop, but the cool part is that there is a tunnel blasted into the rock so you can walk behind the falls.

Dan and Brian went behind the falls first and I took this picture of them next to it to show how big the waterfall was.

Here you can see the tunnel as I’m catching up to Dan and Brian.

Here is Tunnel Falls’ pool down at the bottom.

Eagle Creek had lots of drop-offs where little waterfalls pop up, and it was pretty neat to see, even if the waterfalls were not named.

The trail followed Eagle Creek all the way down the gorge.  The trail is cut into the rock in many spots, and thick steel cables are mounted to the rock as a handrail on the spots where the trail gets skinny.

We found lots of thick trees and high gorge walls.  We had the place mostly to ourselves until we reached High Bridge.  From there on out, we were in range of most of the day hikers and we regularly encountering people.  After a few days of barely seeing anyone else, it certainly seemed like a TON of people.

With about 3 miles to go we passed Loowit Falls, which was about 90 feet tall.  Loowit is a very popular waterfall with photographers, so we took our obligatory photos, too.

We stopped at the top to view Punchbowl Falls from the top and take a few minutes to rest.  As a group, we were pretty sore from the previous 50 miles, and the mile-long steep side trail and then the return trip up that steep side trail did not sound very appealing, so we took in the view from up here.  After a few minutes, we triumphantly headed out to victory and we celebrated with Pizza and Beer.

Our final Spot Track of the trip, going from 7 1/2 mile campground to the trailhead put us at 7 1/2 miles for the day.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 22nd, 2010 at 1:19 pm and is filed under Hiking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.