The first set of falls was definitely not dissapointing. A set of slippery steps, hewn roughly from the natural rock lead down past a cute little flow of water over brown stone.

Naoto decided to celebrate our arrival by breaking out the salt and vinegar chips. He does not appear very happy that I have inherited my father's proclivity for making family members pose for photographs. Or could it just be I am making him stand on two precarious rocks in the fall's pool for this photo?

At that point I thought the (usually) five and a half hour hike would be worth it just to see this first, smallish set of falls. Little did I know what lay in store...

We continued down a steep path with a metal wire handrail for the next set of falls. Actually, the two falls were not all that easy to tell apart, as the water continued down a series of rock slides that seemed perfectly designed for some river otter family to frolic in.

I wished I was a river otter.

Anyway, there was this other falls, which I thought was the next falls, but turned out to be an unnamed falls that nobody seemed to take much interest in. In fact, two or three people passed right by without even stopping to look!

I took pity on it and christened it "Claw Falls." It definitely had some creepy ambiance going on. Maybe I'll use it in one of my next stories....

So Naoto and I got into this argument about the next set of falls we came upon. I thought it was Berry Creek, the biggest and most beautiful of the three we were supposed to see that time. He said it was only Golden Falls, the second one. I didn't believe him.

How could there be TWO falls this pretty in the same loop hike?

The second set of falls: Golden Falls