#15 – Silver Falls Loop

Silver Falls has an eight-mile easy-to-moderate hiking loop. The trail keeps rather flat around the parking areas, but further in there’s more up and down (although it never gets above 500ft elevation gain). I’ve hiked this area before, but my sweetie had not, so we decided that this particular hike would allow for enough of a hiking challenge, while still allowing me to have some legs left for the Cinco de Mayo race the next day.

It was kind of weird and more tourist-y. There’s a gift shop and this empty log cabin situated near the some of the campsites with a sign out front that simply reads “Log Cabin”. Being from Oregon, I found it a rather ridiculous sight, but foreign tourists may find it interesting.

On the whole, I found the hike rather bland, at least compared to some of the amazing hikes I've taken over the past several years. Even though this hike has lots of waterfalls, the Rim Trail section parallels the road most of the way, and all the trails are too manicured to feel like you’re really hiking.

Of course, my opinion may be skewed on account of my crankiness during the day, or on the fact that it went from slightly sunny, to overcast to pouring down rain in the course of three hours. We double timed the remaining three miles, and climbed back in the car for the cold, wet ride home. It rained pretty solidly through Mt. Angel, but let up once we got towards Woodland.

And I wasn’t real happy having had exerted myself far more than I would have liked being a day before a running event. Silly, stupid me.