Moran State Park - Cascade Falls — Monday, May. 14, 2018

I hiked this trail on a super warm and sunny Monday (too warm if you ask this wimpy Seattleite) so I could gather some information to update the trail description. Since I'm writing that soon, I'll just post some photos and trail conditions here.

The trail was in great shape! It's nice and dry almost the entire way. There are one or two spots that are juuuuuust a little muddy, but super easy to just walk right over. Otherwise, its perfectly dry.

There are two ways you can approach the trail: you can start from the Cascade Lake trail and branch off to Cascade falls, or there is a small parking lot at the trailhead which shaves off about a mile of the trail. I went from the Cascade Lake trail and parked at the South Camp day parking area. From here, just follow the lake trail counter clockwise and you'll run right into the Falls trail. If you get a map of Moran State Park, the Cascade Lake to Cascade Falls description will tell you to park at the Cascade Lake day use area and go right of the restrooms.

From the junction to the smaller parking lot, it is mostly uphill, but it isn't very steep. The trail gradually climbs up. Then, once you reach the small parking lot, it's flat and downhill all the way to the falls. There are plenty of signs to point you in the right direction, but the small trailhead provides access to a lot of different trails, so you'll want to hang right both times if you're looking to go to Cascade Falls. Rustic Falls is straight ahead of you at one of the junctions and would be a pretty place to take some long exposure photos (I didn't have time).

Cascade falls themselves are great. There are two viewpoints, each providing great views of the falls. The top one is a little hard to take photos of the falls from because of tree branches, but you can see them in person just fine. From the bottom you can see the whole falls. The trail doesn't go right to the bottom of the falls, but it is clear where people have walked to stand right below them (though just be careful if you do this because the logs and rocks are likely pretty slippery). 

Overall it is a great early season hike. I took my dog and she had a blast (after running away from me in the parking lot - I had to chase her down). It wasn't very difficult for an experienced hiker but was just enough of a workout to break a sweat in the soon-to-be-summer heat. On a Monday, I passed two groups of hikers and two people by themselves, so my guess would be it's pretty popular on the weekends.