Wallace Falls

Anita and I decided to get a hike in together before we head back to school next week. Our problem was trying to figure out which hike to do, so we both went to the Washington Trails Association website and looked for a hike using their find a hike tool. You can put in what area you want, how long you want to hike, what elevation gain you're willing to do, and then it will give you a list of possible hikes, along with directions on how to get there. We debated back and forth between Sauk Mountain or Wallace Falls, and decided to go with Wallace Falls. Wallace Falls is off Highway 2 (Steven's Pass) in Wallace Falls State Park, and has had rave reviews. It has been on my list for awhile and Sunday, August 25th was the day.

This was a 5.5 mile round trip hike that went from easy to moderate to difficult with about 1,200 elevation gain. Unfortunately, this was not a hike that I particularly enjoyed. The best part of it for me was getting to hike with my friend. But there were just too many people! We literally passed (or got passed by) over a hundred people. Another thing was that the trail was rooty, steep, with tall steps that were a challenge for our short legs. There were four view points to see the falls, where we jockeyed with others to see the falls and snap a picture before letting someone else step up to see. The rest of the time we were hiking in woods and trees without much views.

I started by taking a picture of the trails for future reference, and we used the restroom before starting. They had a nice restroom with flush toilets. Anita was trying to get the belt on her pants untwisted and I finally suggested just leaving the belt off, since she didn't really need it, anyways. We then hit the trail, going under some buzzing power lines, and heading up to our first stop, Lower Falls at the picnic shelter. The shelter was full with all the picnic tables taken when we arrived, so we continued up the trail to a viewpoint.

 One of the more interesting parts was that as we were sitting on a bench, waiting for a turn to pose by the falls, a woman came by with a couple men and was explaining to them the work that she'd done earlier that month with a volunteer group. She'd actually built the bench that we were sitting on, and I took the opportunity to thank her for her work. Her group, an environmental group similar to Americorps, had done a lot of work at several of the view points, and they had actually helicoptered in rocks to help build up the trail. From this view point we continued up to the Upper Falls.

Once we'd snapped some pictures, we turned around and headed back down. But we stopped at one more viewpoint that we'd skipped on the way up.

By this time, I had to pee badly but there were constant people. I finally found what looked like an old deserted road and went down far enough to have some privacy among some ferns. Unfortunately, it looked like other people had the same idea because toilet paper was strewn on the ground. That is one of my pet peeves. LEAVE NO TRACE, PEOPLE! If you hike that toilet paper in, then pack it out or at least be courteous enough to bury it. Geez!

That tree was pretty cool. I had Anita pose by it to show the scale. Eventually we made it back to the trail head and when we went in the restroom and washed our hands, Anita noticed her belt sitting on the shelf by the soap. She'd taken it off and then walked off and left it in the restroom! And it was still there five hours later when we returned! We had quite a laugh about that.

The prettiest falls were the first ones we came to, and the Upper Falls weren't as pretty as the Lower Falls. This hike was a lot of work for not much reward, in my opinion.