Wallace Falls in the rain, which is the only way I have seen it

Four times now. Four times, and every single one of them in weather that a reasonable person would have stayed home for. I am beginning to suspect Wallace Falls does not exist on sunny days and the photographs are a conspiracy.

It is five and a half miles round trip to the upper falls with about a thousand three hundred feet of climb, all of it on a trail that in the Pacific Northwest counts as well maintained and everywhere else would count as a creek.

The three-tier problem

There are three viewpoints and the middle one is the famous shot — two hundred and sixty-five feet, the full drop, the picture that is on every list. The trap is that most people stop there, because the last push to the upper falls is steep, muddy, and offers you a worse view at the top.

Go anyway. Not for the view. Go because the last half mile is old growth and the rain does something to the light under a canopy like that which I have not managed to describe to anyone without sounding like I am selling something.

A note on rain gear

I have owned four rain jackets and they have all eventually become jackets that are wet on both sides. The thing that actually works is accepting it early: light layers, wool not cotton, a dry shirt sealed in a bag in the pack for the car. Dry at the end beats dry in the middle.

Waterproof trousers are for people with more patience than me. I go in shorts and cold legs and I have never regretted it, which I recognise is not an argument.

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There is a brewery in Gold Bar on the way back. The correct order is the hike, then the shower, then the brewery, and if you invert any two of those you have made a mistake.