8 miles of hiking • 1750' elevation gain •
Fun day in the frozen Gorge! Hopped in and out of the car, hitting three different smaller adventures. Icicles galore! Started the day with a tour of Upper McCord and Elowah Falls, then a brief jaunt up Eagle Creek, and ended with a quick in-n-out at Wahclella.
First time I've wandered around our initial destination. Headed up towards the Upper McCall Falls first. Ran across a huge (12-14" diameter?) cast iron pipe running down the hillside at one point. No idea what the heck that might've once been! The railing-provided walkway blasted from basalt offered beautiful, crisp views of the mountains across the river in Washington. Then we hit the icicles, which ultimately had frozen up the entire trail. That was our turn around.
Headed down towards Elowah Falls and ran into Webfoot, an old "virtual" friend from PortlandHikers.org - always fun! The falls were spectactular! Ice formations of countless variation. Incredible 40'-tall(ish) pyramid of ice beneath the falls. Took lots of photos; froze fingers in the process. It was about 24° at this point. Just beautiful.
Thought we'd go check out the Metlako viewpoint, that is no more, next. But it wasn't to be. Got a mile, mile-and-a-half, up the trail and decided there was a spot that just didn't warrant the risk of continuing. Lots of ice had rained down from above, so footing wasn't solid and generally sloped over the very near cliff. The cable was no help, either, as it was pretty frozen in. Oh well. Ran into Don, another PH irregular here, too!
Final stop was the normally tourist-overrun Wahclella Falls, which today had but a fraction of its normal traffic. More beautiful than ever, ensconced in ice! Again, we passed under cliffs letting loose massive amounts of ice. Kinda crazy. But beautiful!
Great day in the Gorge!
