The spongy greeness of the Boulder River trail made for a nice walk on a misty, drippy Friday afternoon. The rainfall and high snow level of the preceding few days helped break up the stillness with a little thunder. My car was all alone when I headed out and all alone when I returned.
The portion of the trail from the TH to the Boulder River Wilderness boundary occupies an old roadbed that traverses a few steep, rocky areas. The road shelf is wide and shrouded in mature trees. It's easy to overlook the human intervention that apparently went into the old road's construction. In a few of the steeper spots small cedar logs appear to span gaps and water courses deep below the current trail surface. I a couple spots, soil has flowed downslope from between underlying logs. There is plenty of trailway width. Getting past these areas of subsidence is of no concern. But extensive ponding occurs all along this segment. To the extent that percolation from these pools is occuring through unterlying timber bridging, it can't be helping matters.
I opted for dual hiking poles, rather than an umbrella. With poles I was able to negotiate all puddles, mud, and streams without dunking my boots. Without poles, or the balance of a gymnast, figure on some wading. The footlog surfaces are about what you'd expect in a rain forest. I used the bite of my poles to walk all but the roundest of the slippery devils. The rock-hopping bypass around that one log was easy.
The waterfall attractions are across the river from the trail. The first waterfall was actually cluster of two small falls and a much larger third. The second major waterfall wasn't quite as attractive, possibly due to the massive volume of water falling in a more solid pattern.
Upstream from the second major waterfall, the trail drops down to river level and gets very close to the river for a bit. I got a great look downstream, at a very straight section of the river. Sometimes I use lots of creamer, in an attemp to lighten up old coffee that should have been thrown out. The only way to make matters worse, is to zap it in the microwave. The foamy, gray-brown product of my laziness is sort of what the Boulder looked like as it thundered past.
About 2/10's of a mile above the trail's riverbank approach, I found a group of blowdowns. Two 4"" hemlocks and a 12"" hemlock lay beneath a 16"" snag that broke off.
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