There are far more waterfalls back in these hills than the maps let on, and which one is worth the drive depends entirely on what the rain has been doing. Chris chooses in the week before you arrive and picks the one that’s running best.
The walk in is half the pleasure. We’ll go slowly, because he stops constantly, naming plants as we pass them, getting the baskets out if anything’s fruiting, explaining how a redwood forest puts itself back together after it’s been logged and what the understory is telling you about the water underneath. Then the falls themselves, cold and loud and mossy at the bottom, with plenty of time to sit and enjoy them before we loop back out through the grove past fire scars and second growth and the occasional enormous tree that got missed.
It’s a beautiful morning and a genuinely interesting one, and you’ll come home knowing what you were looking at.
