Moulton Falls and other Falls

Since the cold ugly months rolled in Me and the wife have decided to go back to exploring little things we might avoid in better weather. A literal fog advisory rolled in on Portland two days after Thanksgiving, but it was okay because we headed north to the east fork Lewis River.

Our destination this go-around was Moulton Falls park, a weeny little park on the river east of Battle Ground, Washington. It lies in the western foothills of Silver Star Mountain and the Yacolt Burn area. It offers a lot of areas to swim and picnic, as well as places to almost die at the hands of your dickhead friends. 

The "falls" are located next to a little parking lot on the road. Moulton Falls is more of a big rapid than anything else, but because the river gets so rocky you can practically walk out on it.

A quick walk past the house to the crosswalk across the road leads you on a short path up a side creek to another waterfall, this one much more interesting. There is a train station up a further path and a nice grate bridge over the creek. Excellent photo opportunities abound.

 

The remains of an unlucky picnic table

 

The trail loops back across the road to the bathroom and the overflow parking. Then it dips down to the river for excellent photos of the east fork high bridge. We were lucky to get to this park early, even on a late Nov. Saturday it filled up fast and any later would have given us no picture opportunities without randos in them.

 

The trail hikes up to the bridge and the bridge offers a great view of the gorge. A path upstream before crossing offers a way to walk further up the river to yet another falls but with all the rocks being so wet and an annoying dog we turned around.

From the other side of the bridge a converted road follows the river for 2.5 miles to the Hantwick trailhead. There is one junction along the way to Bells Mountain, and you can reach Silver Star from here if you hate yourself and want to hike 10 miles and then 10 back.

The trail to Hantwick is boring but flat. A section near the end is paved. There is lots of horsepoop. Once at Hantwick we elected to try a little backdoor sneaking into Lucia Falls park. If you walk another 2/3rds mile or so from the trailhead you can cross the river again and sneak behind a fence onto the public land of Lucia Falls park. Another quarter mile and you can see Lucia Falls, which is actually really nice. The falls itself isn't too amazing, but the rock formations in the area are really fun to wander and explore.

After wandering around we headed the long way back to the car. All in all, with our random wanderings and extra walking to Lucia Falls we managed 9 miles out of maybe 2 miles of interesting land. Moulton Falls is a neat little spot but I can tell it is likely a mob of families on summer days.