It had been pretty rainy most of the week leading up to the hike so the hikers were a bit worried it might be canceled. Although hiking in the rain adds a little spice to the hike just like chipotle seasoning adds taste to a plain scrambled egg meal, there were several beginners on this outing and we did want to take precautions to let them enjoy the hike as much as possible. Fortunately the weather cleared up and we set out for the hike at 10 AM, which was not too early but most of us had a 60+ min drive to the meeting spot.
The hike began in a forest where the fall foliage was in full effect. For you californians out there, fall foliage is when the leaves change color. This happens during the fall season, which is between the season of summer (stereotypes: sailboats, beach balls, sunscreen, and sunburns) and the season of winter (stereotypes: snow man with carrot nose, hanging stockings on the fireplace, sleds). Again for you california people, real winter is when the temperature gets cold and there is sometimes snow. Please google "winter" if you are still confused with what it is or come on over to the east coast between Dec and March for a real treat.
Anyways alot of leaves were already on the ground and the leaves still on tree branches were on the cusp of falling. It was a really colorful view, seeing all these different trees and leaves with amazing contrast, but a bit chilly though. The morning temp started in the high 40s but reached the mid 50s by lunch time.
Most of the hike was along a river and every quarter mile we would see a waterfall. We had our counting game face on from the start of the the hike and got fooled (rookie mistake) several times in thinking a sub 10 footer was included in the quest for the 21 waterfalls. The waterfalls differed in size but the rule of thumb for waterfall counting is that if its 10 feet or above its fair game and you are good to go for calling it a legitimate waterfall. Fortunately we had some locals point out the mistake early on and said many out of towners get tricked as well by this magic number.
Anyways the hike was a good 7.8 miler that we finished in short of 4 hours. Since the trail was a big ol loop we were fortunate enough to constantly have a different view but we could definitely see the trail getting crowded after lunchtime with people doing the reverse trail. Also this hike is a dog haven and the ratio of dogs to hikers was approximately 1:4 which is quite frankly an amazing ratio since the population of dogs to humans on planet earth is about 300 million to 7 billion or 1 dog for 233 humans. We were happy to get out early though and have alot of the trail to ourselves. Definitely a hike to do again and converting into a trail running course is a possibility. Boulder rock climbing could also be part of the itinirary, since approximately mile 4 has a group of 10ish 10 foot boulders that have climbing potential.
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