I led a Mountaineer trip to this awesome waterfall that I last visited about 4 years ago. The trailhead starts from a logging road off Riffe Lake. This trailhead is no longer published in any hiking book that I know of. So I'm grateful to the Olympia Mountaineer hike leader who gave me the driving directions. This is lush forest hike along Goat Creek. About a mile in, you reach this awesome waterfall. What makes this waterfall even more interesting is that the trail goes behind the falls and you walk under this huge cavernous area. You immediately know why the waterfall is named Cathedral. It's like entering one of those large cathedrals in Europe. Just jaw-droppingly awesome. After pictures were taken we hiked further. our final destination was a small, no name lake on the map about 4 miles in. We passed beautiful cascading water and a couple of other waterfalls. More pictures. Just before the lake we ran into a water crossing that made some of the folks uncomfortable so we returned to the last waterfall where sun was shining through the forest and made that our lunch spot. After lunch some of us returned to the Mt. Tumwater junction to check out the Mt. Tumwater trail and was immediately stopped by an even larger, faster creek crossing and turned back. This is a nice, easy hike that is accessible for 3/4 of the year. The road up had large muddy spots that made us put our vehicles in 4WD, however, the little Jetta made it up just fine. The piture I am submitting is courtesy of one of our hikers, Chuck B.
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