A while ago I was sick, miserable, and feeling sorry for myself. Instead of posting about how miserable I was on facebook, I decided to think about happy things and posted a list of activities I would love to do this year. On that list, among other things, were hiking, backpacking, and backpacking for more than two days. Immediately I received invitations to go backpacking from two of my friends. Both sounded seriously exciting.
The first offer was for an overnight hike I’d done before, the beautiful Eagle Creek hike in the Columbia Rive Gorge. It’s a fairly easy hike for the gorge, with some elevation gain, but not terribly steep. The only catch is that it was happening in two weeks! Despite being sick, horribly out of shape, and weighing the most I’ve ever weighed, I said yes. There is no better time to start getting back in shape than right now! And in preparation for this I’m doing a few hikes, the first of which was yesterday.
Yesterday was glorious hiking weather, some soft sun, mostly overcast, in the 60’s which to me is the perfect hiking temperature, cool enough to not sweat through all one’s clothes, but warm enough to not need a coat. And it wasn’t even raining!
Our hike began near Alsea Falls, a cute little waterfall near Alsea, Oregon, a bit past Corvallis. We saw a few other hikers, but the trail was far from packed, and we mostly had the place to ourselves.
After hiking down for a nice view of the falls, we managed to correctly guess the correct direction for the trail to Greek Peak Falls. The trail had some gradual ups and downs, a few steeper switchbacks, but it felt like a good warm-up hike. Green Peak Falls was definitely the star of the hike, higher by far than Alsea Falls, and surrounded by a lovely verdant cushion of emerald moss.
We found ourselves unable to resist the scramble (complete with rope!) up the right bank of the falls, and after the adventuresome and somewhat sketchy climb were rewarded by a view of the deceptively calm, lovely creek above.
This was a fun hike with rewarding scenery, definitely one I would recommend. It also has the advantage of being fairly close to Corvallis as well as not too long a trek from the Portland Metro area.