With an open afternoon and good weather we headed south out of the Willamette Valley to Silver Falls State Park to do some hiking. We’d been there on a summer trip in 2016, and we were hoping that the water levels would be higher given the spring rains.

After a fairly long drive we got to the North Falls parking lot and saw the first falls – wow! The flow was definitely more than our last trip and the trails were uncrowded on Wednesday. We started with North Falls and Upper North Falls.

Next we drove to the Twin Falls trailhead to shave off a mile or so of hiking. The descent into the gorge was pretty steep with a decent number of switchbacks. Twin Falls was first, after which Sandie and James headed back to the car. Eric and I pressed on to the next set of falls: Middle North Falls, Drake Falls, Double Falls, and Lower North Falls. All were running beautifully.

We hustled on the way back (uphill) so our friends didn’t have to sit in the car too long.