After a string of straight plunges, a waterfall that dances instead of drops: 242 feet of water spread into a wide white fan, tumbling down the basalt in a dozen braided steps, each ledge throwing it wider. Wahkeena is a Yakama word meaning most beautiful, and it earns the name. Parking is just steps away at a shaded picnic area right at the turnoff. Because the water spreads so thin across so much stone, the whole face is upholstered in moss and fed by a hanging garden of sword fern, maidenhair, and deer fern that stays green right through winter. The wet rocks at the base are prime habitat for the gorge's signature dipper bird. The prettiest cascade on the road, and one that rewards slowing down.
Wahkeena Falls, coming up on your right — and after all the straight plunges you've watched leap clean off the cliffs, this one's a different creature. Wahkeena doesn't drop. It dances. Two hundred and forty-two feet of water spread into a wide white fan, tumbling down the basalt in a dozen braided steps instead of one clean fall, every ledge throwing it a little wider. That's a cascade, not a plunge, and it's the prettiest one on the road. The locals knew it long before you got here: Wahkeena is a Yakama word, and it means most beautiful. There's a shaded picnic area right at the turnoff — a fine place to pull in and stretch your legs, and a fine place to know that this ground came to you the same way Multnomah did. Simon Benson, the lumberman who handed his waterfalls to the public so no one could ever fence them off, gave this one too. Walk out onto the little stone footbridge they've laid across the creek at its base, look up the wet face of it, and watch two hundred and forty-two feet of water come apart into lace.
