When March starts with sunny, 50 degree days, there are no excuses for hanging around the house. Herself came across a mention of the Twin Falls trail, familiar to most of you but no-so-much to we South Sounders. This is waterfall time of year, and we love waterfalls, so we headed up on a Monday morning to start our pre-season conditioning.
Twin Falls is well-described elsewhere, and reporters agree about all details except the numbers. This short (2.4 mile) trail has a net elevation gain of only about 250 feet, but the ups and downs really add "up", so you can expect to lift yourself (and pack) about 700 feet on the way in and 400 feet on the way out. You really should add another 0.1 mile and 165 feet by taking the stairs down to the lower viewing platform, where you can best see the rock face and plunge pool below the lower falls. Incredible!
At 11 AM, there were 22 cars in the trailhead parking lot and 2 of the 3 vault toilets open and working (complete with hand sanitizer!). We returned at 1:30 to note 28 cars in the lot and 7 cars on the roadside, making this much busier than I expected on a Monday. (Aren't you folks supposed to be at work???)
The trail is in great shape, with two easy step-over logs and a duck-under grouped together just after the first mile. There are a couple of spots where streamlets want to share the trailbed with hikers, but they shortly follow gravity across the trail and downhill once more. The only shady, mucky spot is relatively short and has a plank in the center, so you never have to step in any water (or mud) over an inch deep. The trail is boarded up (literally) at the upper falls viewpoint, presumably until slumps and other trailbed concerns are properly dealt with. It's clear this trail gets heavy use, so support the maintainers by heeding the notice. One result of this "stoppage" is that there are limited places to have your lunch at the upper viewpoint, given the popularity of the hike. Instead, we headed back down to the flats just before the trailhead and enjoyed a quiet lunch along the river.
We find King County trails to be "doggy", and this one is no exception, with all but 3 of the 15+ dogs we encountered fully leashed. Given the twists and turns and ups and downs, I wouldn't have expected to see as many lap dogs as we did, but no one polls the pets when they set out for a walk.
The river was magnificent, the falls even more so: it's time to pay another (or your first?) visit to this convenient gem. It may be short in mileage, but your legs will remind you that "net gain" is a meaningless statistic!
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