Thursday, June 14, 2018

June 14 – Roberts Creek Falls, Cliff Gilker Falls, and Trolls

It was another cloudy morning so we went off to some more waterfalls. I was about to say that this should fulfill our need for waterfalls for a while but I remembered that we are going on a boat cruise tomorrow where we will see a lot more.

I am a bit disappointed with the pictures today. Somehow a dial on the camera got changed and all the pictures are rather grainy.

We did three short hikes today.

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First up was the 1 km return hike to Day Falls on Roberts Creek. The instructions I had read said to park at the end of the road and then follow someone’s driveway until the trail starts, then second right trail, then third right trail. Conveniently someone had now put “Waterfall This Way” signs on some trees to make sure we went the right way.

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The first part of the trail was narrow.

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As with yesterday, the trail was mostly flat until the very end when we had to climb down the valley walls to the falls.

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The falls in the picture above are actually below the viewpoint so we could barely see them once down.

The main falls from the viewpoint.

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Down at creek level it was easier to see the rounded end to the gorge.

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The photosphere does a much better job when things are all around you.

This is the falls we could see from up top, looking almost straight down from my feet.

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And a somewhat distorted panorama showing more of downstream.

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Once again the photosphere does a a much better job.

I climbed back up to walk around the end of the gorge to see what was upstream. First a shot back towards Jennie and the initial viewpoint.

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And the wider view.

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The top of the falls was quite the jumble of fallen trees.

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Upstream there were more trees hanging over the creek.

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Then back to Jennie and up and to return to the car.

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It was a short drive to Cliff Gilker Park.

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There are several trails in the park but we were just here for the waterfalls so we just did the short loop down the red trail to the bridge at the bottom and then back up the yellow trail.

The first and biggest one was right next to the parking lot. A website called it Leisure Falls.

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We love to watch the waves of water move down the smooth rock face.

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On our way back I tried to use a long exposure to blur the water but by then it was sunny so the time couldn’t be really long.

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The next one was more of a cascade and it was obscured under this mess of fallen trees.

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This is the best I could do.

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It was a dangerous trail. We had to watch out for snipers.

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Another small one.

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Our lunch spot.

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The photosphere.

And the waterfall at the bottom of the loop. The website called this one Shadow Falls.

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Looking farther downstream.

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This one looked like a good candidate for a blurry shot. Not bad for handheld. I like it.

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Then over the bridge and back up the yellow trail.

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There was a small cascade under the middle bridge.

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And back to the car.

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Another short drive to Brookman Park and the lower end of the Chapman Creek Trail that eventually leads up to Chapman Falls from yesterday.

I had read in a blog that a local artist had done some chainsaw carving of troll faces on some of the trees beside the trail. There are supposed to be seventeen in total but we only went a short way up to catch a few.

The creek flows into the ocean under the highway.

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The trail pictures are from the way back. Going in the creek was on our right side.

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It took a while to find the first so we began to wonder if we were in the right place. These roots were interesting enough so we thought that for sure there would be one here but no.

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The river had washed out part of the trail so they had recently installed these stairs so that you could up and around.

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The first one was small but obvious.

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It was the only one we found on a live tree. The rest were on old stumps.

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This one was showing the ravages of time.

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This one was off to the side so it was a little harder to spot.

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The next, that we saw, was even harder as it was in the shadows.

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At these two we turned around and headed back.

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I don’t think this smiley face on the boardwalk counts.

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And home.

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