Waterfalls

Today was the day for waterfalls,  and lots of them… Old scenic Hwy 30 runs along the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge, and has hiking,  waterfalls and amazing small gorges.  The first waterfall I came to was Horsetail falls,  This was right off the road, and a wonderful falls to start the day with.

It is time to give a plug to the guys at Really Right Stuff tripods.  I would not have been able to get the pictures today without the setup I got from these guys.  Photo hint… to get a picture of a smooth flowing waterfall,  you need as long of an exposure as possible.  This is can NOT be done hand held,  most of the pictures today had exposures of over 1 second and some as much as 5 seconds.  This causes some amazing results,  but sometimes can cause interesting ones too (I will tell you about the ghost later…)
 

Next was the Oneonta Gorge hike.  This looked like a pre-historic area with large ferns and moss, in this dark narrow gorge.  There was a place where a number of trees had piled up that I had to climb over to keep going up the gorge (and to get some pictures).   Some pretty good bouldering was needed too!

 Next was Multnomah Falls.  This is the second largest falls in the US (and I had never heard of it)  This fal? is one of the most picturesque falls I have ever seen.  There is a bridge crossing part way up and there are trails all the way to the top.  Of course I had to do this trail and more…  The trail to the top (pic below is from the top)  is about 3 miles round trip (and worth every bit) and then I kept hiking up the trail to see the Weisendanger falls too.  
So I guess I hiked a little over 5 miles on this part of the day (I really didn’t keep track of how much for the whole day…)   On the way up the trail,  there are signs on each of the switchbacks.  About ½ mile into the hike,  I see the sign “switchback 1 of 11”…  Oh well,  I needed my hike for the day.  So, carrying my tripod,  off I go…  I talked to a number of people along the way,  and really enjoyed the day. Next, down the road just a little was Wahkeena Falls,  had to get pictures, and hike up to the bridge at that one too.   

Oh,  I almost forgot to tell about the ghost!   I was hiking up above the top of the Multnomah Falls,  and there was a nice bridge over the water, that was pretty dark from the trees.  I hiked down to the middle of the creek to get this picture and set everything up for a 2.5 second exposure.  A little over a second into the picture,  a lady with a grey shirt walked towards the bridge and into my picture.  Because of the long exposure, you can only see a grey blur in part of the picture…. So there is my ghost…

During the hike,  I met members of a Japanese/American cultural hiking club.  It was really nice talking with this group.  They get together every couple of weeks and do some long hikes together.  Today they had done a little over 6 miles.  I got talking to them (over ice cream) at the bottom and they recommended Silver Falls State Park (East of Salem OR)  as another place to hike and get pics of waterfalls.  Amazingly this park was not very far from the Willamette Wine Region,  so it sounded like a perfect destination for the night!

Oh darn,  I have to hit more wineries tomorrow  (at least I had a day off wineries for hikes and waterfalls)…   

I got way to many good waterfall pictures to post to the blog today, so please check out the website for more...http://www.haresphotography.com/Other/Waterfalls/