Waterfalls at Big Basin
Our trip to Big Basin Redwoods State Park on Sunday wasn't just a walk in the woods. However beautiful the woods are as you walk among the solemn giants of the redwood forest (previous blog), there's even more to see. Our hiking loop would take us past not fewer than 4 significant waterfalls.
We hiked the trail "backwards" from our usual order as Merhawk mentioned in her blog. That meant looping around to the top of the stream and visiting the falls from top to bottom. This is significant because the lowest falls, Berry Creek Falls, is the most well known at the park and is considered the go-to spot. Trail notes typically guide you directly to it. This leads a lot of visitors to turn around once they've seen it. We did that on our first visit to the park back in 1997. But the other falls are certainly worth seeing.
So, going from top to bottom this time, our first stop was at Golden Cascades.
Golden Cascades isn't "a" waterfall so much as a series of drops across smooth rock faces. You can see the biggest drop in the picture above. It's about 25' tall. The mud-like color in the rock is not mud. It comes from minerals in the stone.
The next stop down was Silver Falls. These falls are at least 60' tall and pour over a rocky ledge.
The flow over the falls may seem light compared compared to gushers like those at Oregon's Silver Falls State Park but it's typical for this area. We've visited at various times of the year over the past many years, and it's always been like this. Frankly, we were thankful to see even this much water as California has been been in drought the past few years. But these coastal mountains tend to stay moist from daily ocean fog even when other parts of the state are parched.
Finally, we dropped down past Berry Creek Falls, the "main" falls which are about 85' tall. Here's a shot from the viewing platform:
After this it was "up and out": ascend 800' back up to the canyon ridge and then drop back down to our car on the other side.
We hiked the trail "backwards" from our usual order as Merhawk mentioned in her blog. That meant looping around to the top of the stream and visiting the falls from top to bottom. This is significant because the lowest falls, Berry Creek Falls, is the most well known at the park and is considered the go-to spot. Trail notes typically guide you directly to it. This leads a lot of visitors to turn around once they've seen it. We did that on our first visit to the park back in 1997. But the other falls are certainly worth seeing.
So, going from top to bottom this time, our first stop was at Golden Cascades.
Golden Cascades isn't "a" waterfall so much as a series of drops across smooth rock faces. You can see the biggest drop in the picture above. It's about 25' tall. The mud-like color in the rock is not mud. It comes from minerals in the stone.
The next stop down was Silver Falls. These falls are at least 60' tall and pour over a rocky ledge.
The flow over the falls may seem light compared compared to gushers like those at Oregon's Silver Falls State Park but it's typical for this area. We've visited at various times of the year over the past many years, and it's always been like this. Frankly, we were thankful to see even this much water as California has been been in drought the past few years. But these coastal mountains tend to stay moist from daily ocean fog even when other parts of the state are parched.
Finally, we dropped down past Berry Creek Falls, the "main" falls which are about 85' tall. Here's a shot from the viewing platform:
After this it was "up and out": ascend 800' back up to the canyon ridge and then drop back down to our car on the other side.