Forked Falls on Boulder River Hike

Forked waterfall plunges into Boulder River

The weather forecast claimed that the rain would hold off until mid-afternoon on Thursday, May 15th. Time enough, I figured to do a little exploration in my own back yard.

I swung the gate closed and rolled up the road toward the mountain town of Darrington. I covered the 24.5 miles that brought me to the turn off to the Boulder River Trailhead in 30 minutes, arriving at 10 AM. I had high expectations that I could visit a mesmerizing, unnamed forked waterfall rushing over the rockface rising for a hundred feet or more above the Boulder River.

Boulder River Trailhead. I was the first one on the trail this morning.

After a 3.6 mile drive up a decent (at least the first two-thirds of the way) dirt road, I parked as the only vehicle at the trailhead this morning. I tossed my rucksack on my back, stuffed with a camera, raingear and several bottles of water and was off for a scenic mountain adventure. I could hear the roar of Boulder River in the distance and far down the mountain as I closed the SUV door. The trail peters out in about 8 miles, but the point of interest, a majestic, split waterfall was only a 30-40 minute hike with moderate elevation gain.

The beginning of the trail is a wide and level grade, having once been a narrow gauge railroad built to extract timber in the early 20th Century.

The trail is lined with a wall of fern as one ducks under fallen timber that lays above the trail on the steep mountain slope into which the trail is cut. I am amazed that I find myself now living in a place that is so eye-slammingly green. Moss is thick and spongy and grows on rocks, trees and on those that do not move quickly down the trail. As I round the mountain, the roar of Boulder River far down-slope gets louder and I get a few glimpses of the rapids from on high. 

Large fir trees cling to boulders on the steep slope above the river

The wide, level trail reaches the Wilderness Boundary where no logging was permitted within, and the easy railroad grade trail now yields to a narrower path hewn into the old growth wilderness with a moderate, rocky ascent into the woods above Boulder River.

I was expecting my boots to be kicking across a terrain of dark andesite or dacite igneous intrusives, but I puzzled that underneath all of this moss and tenacious tree roots were slopes not of igneous rocks, but of metasedimentary rocks in hues of grays, greens and blacks and a few dun patches to boot. 

A boulder-strewn channel carves the narrow river ravine at the base of the northwest face of 125 foot cliff with a gorgeous double waterfall in view between the tall timber. A fast-flowing stream rushes over the precipice, cascading through two vertical channels lined with vibrant green moss.

Boulder River fed by an unnamed forked waterfall

Forked falls framed by a moss covered forked tree.

There was about a 40 - 50 foot scramble off the trail to clamber down to the river's gravel bank. The descent was steep, utilizing strategic jutting stone steps and a few horizontal logs as footholds. 

The scramble off the main trail,
descending to the Boulder River at the 
base of the forked falls 

It was worth it. 

I could have lingered and enjoyed the cacophonous serenade of kinetic waters colliding as I sat alone in the cool, misty mountain air for much longer. I climbed back up to the main trail for a peek at what might be ahead on this trail. 

I ventured further up the trail beyond the waterfall to see if another spectacular sight might behind around the bend and in view between the trees. Trapsing across a fallen log fitted with handrails spanning a deep ravine, I covered perhaps another mile, took a few photos of some of the wildflowers growing the the mountainside.

But I had a few other hikes and sights planned up the road. So, I turned around on the Boulder River Trail and set the toes of my boots pointing toward the Mountain Loop Highway, a mostly unpaved car path through some deep woods and mountain passes the connects the Cascade Mountain towns of Darrington with Granite Falls.