A beautiful waterfall hike with a variety of waterfalls along the way. Best was ponytail falls, which was a really different experience where we got to walk behind the water fall.
Parking: We reached the trail head around 11.00 AM and it was super crowded, we had to park along the road. That might have been because this was the eclipse weekend, which could have been the reason for all the crowd.
Trail conditions: The trail is heavily used and hence in a pretty good state. The stretch from Oneonta falls to triple falls was very steep at places and was very rocky as well, making it easy to slip - having poles would help.
Shade: Most of the trail is in very good shade. There is probably small stretches from Oneonta falls to triple falls where there is no shade.
Elevation gain: The trail gains elevation very gradually until the junction to Larch mountain. From here to triple falls is a comparatively steeper at places, but these are very small stretches not hard to cross. The stretch from Oneonta falls to Ponytail falls gains elevation to start with, but it is also very gradual with good switchbacks.
Route: We started the hike from the trail head west of Oneonta george parking (Tr 424 in map linked below). We hiked till triple falls and turned back to complete the loop via Ponytail and horse tail falls. We walked back along the road to our car from the horsetrail falls trail head.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5227099.pdf
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