Silver Falls — Trail of Ten Falls

Welcome to the Trail of Ten Falls. I'm Ranger Quinn, your guide for the next few hours, and walking with us is Ranger Boone Merrick — So here's the day. About seven and a half miles, a full loop: down into the canyon…

Now hold on, friend — don't go snapping your photo and shuffling off just yet. Name's Ranger Boone Merrick, and I've got a tale that belongs to this rim you're standing on. Right here. Not down the trail, not back at…

And there she is, pouring off the brink right beside you. South Falls, the headliner everybody drives out here for, one clean ribbon of creek water falling the better part of eighteen stories into the green bowl below…

Drop your eyes for a second. Not up, not out at the trail — straight down, at what you're walking on. The whole floor's gone green. That tall, plumey fern crowding both edges of the path, the one with the long fronds…

Notice the ground starting to drop away under your boots? The trail's tipping over the edge now, folding back on itself in switchbacks, carrying you down off the plateau and into the gorge. Take the corners easy. With…

Down you go — and here she is, Lower South Falls, ninety-three feet of water pouring off the lip above you in one broad, unbroken sheet. The air's heavier here, wetter, the creek louder where the walls close in. And t…

Brush your hand along the trail's edge here and you're touching the pantry. All these shoulder-high shrubs crowding in on you — this layer feeds half the canyon. The big maple-shaped leaves with the soft fuzz? That's…

Slow your feet a second and look up. The roar has dropped off here, the trail leveling between falls, and you're walking through the kind of forest that takes five hundred years to make. Those towering columns are Dou…

That braided rush under your boots just doubled — feel it in the sound. You're standing at the low point of the whole canyon, where Silver Creek finally puts itself back together. Two arms of the same water, joining r…

Crouch down for a second. Lower than you think — knee-height, where the light filters down dim and green. That's where spring lives in this canyon, and you've timed it. Look for trillium first: three broad leaves, a s…

Stay put a minute in this stretch of deep timber. The trail's gone quiet, the falls behind you, the canyon walls leaning in green and wet, dripping a little even when it isn't raining. Boone Merrick's the name. Now lo…

Reach up and touch one of those pale-green tufts dangling off the branch overhead. Go ahead. That's not a plant, and it isn't decay either. It's lichen, and it's two living things sharing one body. A fungus builds the…

Slow your boots here. The water dropping just ahead, off that low shelf, is Lower North Falls — thirty feet, and the first of a tight run of falls packed into a short stretch of the North Fork. Call it waterfall alley…

Look up to the dead end of this little box canyon — there she is. Double Falls. One hundred and seventy-eight feet, top to bottom, which makes her the tallest waterfall in Silver Falls. Nothing else here comes close.…

Slow your feet here, because you could walk right past this one and never know it. There's a small wooden platform off to your side, and below it, threading down a dark step of rock, runs Drake Falls. Twenty-seven fee…

Don't you dare hurry past this little one. That skinny twenty-seven-foot ribbon you just walked by, the one that barely makes a sound against all its big shouting cousins, that's the falls a man's whole life is hung o…

Look at how thin she runs — Middle North Falls, one hundred and six feet of water sliding off the rim in a single clean ribbon. She's a tall one, narrow and graceful, fanning a little wider near the bottom where the w…

Don't hurry past this stretch of creek — there's a neighbor here you'll never meet if you keep moving. They call me Ranger Boone. Stand still a minute, hush up, and watch the water. You're on the North Fork now, and…

Crouch down at the edge here, where the North Fork goes glassy over gravel. Watch the slow water below that rock shelf — give it a breath. See that shadow holding steady against the current, nose pointed upstream? Tha…

And there's the pair — Twin Falls, thirty-one feet of North Fork Silver Creek coming down in two ribbons instead of one. The trick is that lump of rock right at the brink. The creek meets it, can't decide, and goes ar…

Ease your pace here, and let your ears do the walking for a minute. The creek's still down there, but layered over it is a forest full of voices, and this stretch climbing toward the next falls is the best place on th…

Look down at that rotting log beside the trail. See those caps pushing up through the bark — gilled and pale, slick from last night's rain? Those are the mushrooms, and they're only the fruit. The real organism is und…

Slow your eyes down to the ground for a second. That bright yellow thing inching across the wet leaves, long as your finger and slick as a peeled banana? That's a banana slug, and he's busy turning the fallen forest i…

Look up, and there it is, filling the back wall of the amphitheater. North Falls, one hundred and thirty-six feet of North Fork water hurling itself off the rim into the bowl in front of you. And the path carries you…

Round this last bend and the canyon opens up, tucked into the back of this box like a secret the creek's been keeping. Upper North Falls, sixty-five feet, the last waterfall down here in the canyon — the ninth of your…

Notice how the roar fell away behind you? You're on top of the world now — or at least on top of the canyon you just climbed out of. This is the rim. The trail goes flat and easy under your boots, no more switchbacks,…

Run your hand along the edge of one of these stone steps before you go on — go ahead, the cold of it will tell you something. Ranger Boone Merrick, and glad of your company up here on the rim. The trail goes easy and…

Stop a second and hold your hand out, palm up. Feel that? Even when it isn't raining, the air here is doing something — heavy, cool, faintly wet against your skin. That's the whole secret of this place, and up here in…

Across the canyon, leaping off the far rim and dropping into the green of the gorge, that's Winter Falls — the tenth and last waterfall of your loop, and the only one you'll meet up here on the rim return. One hundred…

All day you've been listening to this water do the loudest thing it knows how to do — the roar you stood under, the mist on your face, drop after drop coming off the basalt. And every bit of it is headed somewhere, on…

Trees and quiet now, the falls a long way behind you. This level, easy ground under your boots was nearly something else entirely. Back in the nineteen twenties and thirties, folks made a real push to turn this place…

Look around you on this last stretch down toward the day-use. The second-growth Douglas-fir crowding the trail, the moss, the green that swallows everything whole. Folks here just call me Ranger Boone. And I want you…

Ten waterfalls. Count them off if you want — South, the two Lowers, Double, Drake, Middle North, Twin, North, Upper North, Winter — and four of them you didn't just look at. You walked behind them. Not many trails on…