Linda's Tour - Lovely Latourell Falls

After touring Astoria and Cannon Beach (pictures still to come!) I made my way through downtown Portland (pictures still to come!) and back over to Washington's town of Vancouver.  In the morning I met Linda at a park and ride for my anticipated tour of the Columbia River Gorge.

Historic Columbia River Highway

Those who read Linda's Blog have seen all her wonderful photographs of the waterfalls in the Gorge at different times of the year.  But lovely Latourell Falls doesn't need to be dressed up in fall colors  to take your breath away, the crustose lichen on the columnar basalt cliff makes a color statement all on its own.

golden cobblestone lichen (Pleopsidium flavum) at top of falls

Its 224 foot drop is hard to imagine if you don't see it in person. 

Thanks to Linda for this great shot of me approaching the falls!

As I found out, this type of waterfall has its own photography needs.  A tripod would have been ideal and when I make it back to the Northwest I will make sure to have one.  I deleted a lot of shots that just weren't crisp enough since I'm not as used to holding a heavy camera as I used to be.  And unlike a stream which benefits from a slower shutter speed I found that the better shots I ended up with showed the movement of the water instead of blurring it.

For an idea of how large the falls really is, notice the small bridge in the photo above.  The path to the left is what I was walking on in the photo that Linda shared and in the photo below here she is walking towards the bridge!

When your eyes get tired of the bright lichen they can move on to the texture of that columnar basalt.  If you want to know way too much about this area's basalt you can start with this Wikipedia link, or you can just go with the fact that due to volcanic activity lava flowed into this area probably at least 14 million years ago and as it cooled it formed these neat cracks.

Freaking awesome, right?

The creek was pretty, but it really was hard to take your eyes off the falls...

And off the lichen!

After crossing the bridge we passed under the Historic Columbia River Highway and started making our way upwards to see the Upper Latourell Falls.  Maybe Linda will chime in below in the comments to let us know how long the total loop hike was because I know there were a few options and am not sure which one we took.  I was too busy trying to keep up!  I'll post the Upper Falls photos in the next post, more waterfall porn to enjoy tomorrow...