Otter Falls and Big Creek Falls

Just yesterday I did my first hike of the year: I followed a trail to two amazingly beautiful waterfalls in the middle of the forest, the Otter Falls and the Big Creek Falls. It was a very nice and surprisingly easy hike and it couldn't have been a better way to start the hiking season.

The falls are located in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, deep into the woods past the Snoqualmie river. A somewhat rough dirt road takes you to the trailhead, and then you follow the Taylor river through what used to be a forest road: that makes for a trail with little elevation gain and a relatively wide path, so it is pretty easy to cover the more or less four miles until the Otter Falls.

I've been blessed in my life that I have been in places where you can say that pictures don't do them justice. That is very much the case of the Otter Falls. They sit on this vast rocky mountain side, a narrow stream of water going all the way down to a small lake. The only way to absorb the scale of the place is to be there: you feel very small next to such a massive rock wall, with water constantly falling down. By the way, the water is pristine, you can easily see through the lake at the bottom of the falls.

If you go ahead a little further, you reach the Big Creek Falls. Those are quite different, in the sense that they are big: it's a lot of water falling through the mountain, especially at this time of the year, with all the snow on the mountains melting down. In fact, that is a constant in this trail: there are a number of small creeks crossing the trail, and waterproof boots are essential if you don't want to get your feet wet (and hiking with wet feet will inevitably lead to blisters, which I unfortunately found out years ago).

The sun was shining on this Sunday, so I could see the water on the Taylor river glistening and also the tree trunks getting bright green as the sun shone on the mosses. All in all, it was a really good hike, one that I would recommend to everybody, especially at this time of the year.


















Location: Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Marblemount, WA 98267, USA

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