Latourell Falls and Oneonta Trail

This past Saturday Janel and I were planning on doing Dog Mountain in the Gorge. On our way out there, we encountered overcast skies and colder than expected temperatures so we decided to bail and do a couple short hikes in the Gorge that we have not done yet. After about an hour the clouds burned off and it turned into a beautiful day, but oh well :). The hikes were pretty good.


We started off doing the Latourell Falls trail. Latourell Falls itself is one of my favorite falls in the gorge. It is very close to the road though, so we usually just stop by and had not ever done the 2.7 mile loop hike up to Upper Latourell Falls. For those of you looking to do the hike, definitely start out uphill (not downhill towards the lower falls) as the view are better this direction.


Upper Latourell Falls turned out to be a good waterfall. Not quite as large as the lower falls, but still worth the hike.





The lower falls are of course great. Definitely take a quick walk down to these falls from the historic highway if you are ever in the area.





On the way we also saw a snail which I thought was kinda cool :).





Next we moved on to the Oneonta Trail. We started up from Horsetail Falls and first hit up Poneytail Falls. It is one of those falls that you can walk behind, but really not all that exciting if you have done that sort of thing before. The ones at Silver Falls are better.





You then head along the gorge to the West. Not really that exciting. I got once decent photo out of it though.





Next you come to a little view into the Oneonta Gorge. This is a really thin canyon that comes up to Oneonta Falls. It is supposed to be a really fun hike -- but only in the late summer when the snow melt has settled down and on a hot day (the water is really really cold and you have to wade through it). Here is a (poor) photo where I try to capture the gorge (admittedly not that well).





Finally, we headed up to Triple Falls. We had a nice picnic along the river just above the falls.





All in all, I would rate the Latourell Falls hike a 3.5 and the Oneonta Trail a 3. You can see all the photos from Latourell Falls here or the photos from Oneonta Trail here.