We continued a short distance upstream and scrambled down into the gorge through lots of brush to Mosaic Falls. This one is hard to photograph because it can only be seen in the spray zone:
From there, we climbed steeply to cross-canyon views of Columnar Canyon Falls, and this time I lucked out with a cloud obscuring the sun:
We scrambled over the ridge to Park Creek Canyon and made a steep, sketchy scramble down a loose talus field to Howlaak Falls. The sun was shining directly over the top of the falls, making for horrible photography. The photos turned out so bad that I'm not going to bother to post them. If you want to see a decent picture of the falls, see here. From there, we climbed back up the crumbly canyon slopes and crossed the creek on a log. We then traversed over half a mile through a burn area to Pheonix Falls. This one suffered similar lighting issues, but the pictures from the canyon rim turned out all right.
On the way back to the trail, we stopped to see Middle Park Creek Falls:
From there we bushwhacked back to the main trail. We took a side trip to see Kalawus Falls (finally good light!).
On the way back down, we stopped at The Cascades and Chush Falls.
Our GPS track:
- GPS Track
Casey
