Last week I hiked two completely different hikes to the tops of two completely different waterfalls. First I hiked to the top of Golden Falls in Golden and Silver Falls State Park west of Coos Bay. It was a 1-mile hike to the top of a 100-foot waterfall, not bad, not bad…
But then I stopped at Multnomah Falls in the Columbia River Gorge on my way to an AmeriCorps training. Now if I had known I was going to do the whole 1.2-mile hike to the top of the falls, I may have strapped on my hiking boots. And if I had known Multnomah Falls is actually the second tallest year round waterfall in the nation, I may have abandoned the idea completely. But I didn’t know either of those things at the time. I started up the 0.2-mile hike to the bridge over the lower 69-foot falls, and I just kept going. Besides wanting to move past the cold shower I was receiving on the 45-foot bridge, I had an overwhelming sense that there was a reason to get to the top of this waterfall, a reason to not give up, if only just to know that I had done it.
Well, it turns out Multnomah Falls is 620 feet in height total and a 1.2-mile trail to get there makes that an almost 10% grade. On the other hand, the 1-mile hike I had done earlier that week amounted to a less than 2% grade. No wonder my legs hurt so much more after the second hike.
After the Multnomah Falls hike, I could have really gone for a big cone of ice cream. And if it had been 1919-1924, I could have had just that at the bottom of the falls at “Multnomah Hazelwood” which was a drive-in version of a popular Portland ice cream parlor at the time. Now, there is something to start looking for an antique, linen postcard of.
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View from the top of Golden Falls.
View from the bottom of Multnomah Falls 
View from the top of Multnomah Falls
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