Palouse Falls Hike

On Dale's recommendation, Lindsey and I took a trip to Palouse Falls Recreation Area two weekends ago. As is often the case in the Pacific Northwest, the near-total lack of information about the site online made it a real surprise compared to what I at least was expecting, but in a good way.

The drive to the falls took us out to Washtucna, which evoked a lot of old memories of making the drive to the Tri-Cities and back that way twice a week for a year when I was teaching at the WSU campus there. A few miles past Washtucna, though, you take a left at a huge, very obvious sign, and then we were on "new road," for us at least. The road into the park was one of those many gorgeous, winding, slow-down-and-enjoy-the-view-or-you'll-crash-in-a-fiery-wreck roads that the Palouse does so well, and that far south we were actually somewhere between the channeled scablands and the loess hills that encircle Pullman, so the landscape was extra-beautiful.

I was vaguely aware of the fact that we were paralleling the Palouse river throughout our drive (you actually follow it for a bit just before and then out of Washtucna on our normal Tri-Cities route) and that it would eventually have to turn from a glorified stream into a falls, which would necessitate a drop in elevation, but I still didn't expect the pleasingly monotonous desert-scrub landscape we were driving through to so suddenly transform into a goddamn canyon. But it did, and then we were in the parking lot, just like that, about eighty or so minutes after leaving Pullman.

There'd been some terror on my part on the way there that I'd left my Discovery Pass ($30/yr for access to lots of pretty outdoor things!) at home like a moron, when in reality it was just hidden in that secret corner of space-time in the glove compartment where all important pieces of documentation go the moment before you really need them. Upon arriving at the Palouse Falls "trailhead," though, we found out that it was National Outdoors Day (or somesuch) and so was one of the three or four days out of the entire year when parking was free. Then I found my Discover Pass.

Anyway, the parking area and its environs were a (literal) oasis in a (literal) desert. There was a small camping area and a nice, tree-shaded lawn whereupon people were grilling and picnicking and such. Of course, we weren't there to freaking eat, we were there to tax our bodies physically and almost fall off of a fucking waterfall.

These experiences were a little harder to come by than we expected, thanks to the site's horrible signage-to-useful-information ratio, which was high even by Washington State Park Services standards. Signs goddamn everywhere, but none of them telling us how to actually hike to the falls. See, there's a phenomenal cliffside observation area right at the parking lot, but we'd heard tales of hiking down to the top of the waterfall itself, and so obviously that's what had to be done.

Unfortunately, there was no clear way down. Using common sense, we started off down one of the many, many crisscrossing footpaths that seemed to have the most tough-looking people walking on it. In this case, our logical deduction paid off in a series of higher and higher viewpoints which made it easier to understand how the site's trail system worked and even hinted at the possibility of being able to get to the base of the waterfall. Challenge accepted.

We followed the trail to the left of the original observation point as it crossed over a few high bluffs and then dropped down a bit onto some (active!) railroad tracks. Fortunately, in true Washingtonian fashion, these tracks were populated with hikers just chilling out and parents skipping rocks with their tiny, train-vincible children.

We walked down the tracks aways and then descended the really obvious path down the railroad grade to the river proper. Along the river were the biggest sage bushes (sage trees?) I've ever seen. Lots of people lined the sides of the river around the lower, more gentle "Upper Falls," and this little river-powered desert oasis would have been a great place to eat a lunch (or camp for a night, if it wasn't illegal). We pushed on after a few minutes, though, following the obvious trail along the base of the cliff on the right side of the river (as it flows downstream).

En route to the top of the falls, we ran across a hugely chubby marmot, and some more great views of the canyon walls, and then there was a disturbingly placid pool that suddenly dropped over 200 feet. Water, fall.

Lindsey jumped around a bit on the rocks just above the cataract while I sat on the ground and tried not to look at her (I'm afraid of heights and of other people falling from them, especially), and then we weighed the pros and cons of continued along a rather slippery-looking trail that circled back the way we'd come from but under the observation deck.

It seemed like this trail dead-ended in a 150-foot gravel-and-scree wash that could only possibly be descended with ropes, but if my mountaineering experience has taught me anything, it's that you've really got to be face-to-face with a descent before you can really see how steep it is. So we followed the almost-goat-trail along the opposite side of the cliff wall until we reached the wash.

At some point in here, we realized that there were actually totally normal-looking people fishing at the foot of the waterfall, so it started to seem like it must be possible to get down there without any special equipment. Turned out that there was a steep but walkable dirt-and-scrabble path that ran down the hill in the opposite direction of the wash. We followed it down, half-walking and half-sliding for the entire 200-foot descent, and then enjoyed a lunch at the foot of the huge waterfall, which was, as I said above, a lot awesomer than we'd been led to believe by our pre-hike research.

Going back up the dusty path to the top of the waterfall required a bit of exertion, especially under the desert sun as we were, but it wasn't nearly as hard as descending had been. From the top of the waterfall, it was a pleasant cool-down hike back to the car. All in all, we probably spent about three hours in the park (at most), and then we took the "long way" home: south out of the park and east through Starbuck, then back up north to Dusty before heading the rest of the way home the usual way. This drive was especially (and unexpectedly beautiful), and included some amazing train bridges and great views of the Snake River.