Exploring WA State Waterfalls- Little Mashel Falls

I used to love hiking before I had kids. I explored quite a few waterfalls in Oregon and fell in love with them. Recently I discovered this hike through a facebook hiking group and have wanted to check it out! It's only an hour drive from me, and "easy" 5 mile hike roundtrip. It looked perfect. Of course I wanted to photograph someone here, so I grabbed a friend and we set off on an adventure!

When we arrived and parked it wasn't very clear where the trail started, so we followed another group up a road looking for a trailhead. We passed a little unmarked path with a blue diamond and decided to turn left and check it out. It turned out being the right path as we finally saw a sign that said Falls this way! It was a long, straight path for a good hour. We passed a small waterfall on the right and kept on going. The other group had turned back, thinking they had missed the trailhead but we just kept going. Good thing we did because we finally found it! Then the muddy trail upward began. A good 0.5 miles uphill and LOTS of mud, we came to the middle falls turn off. It was about 11am on a Saturday and there was quite a few people there. We slowly walked down (hikers said to be careful as it was slippery) and found a good spot to post up and change into photo clothes. That was challenging too because of the mud! We snapped some shots then a huge crowd of people arrived so we packed up and found a spot for lunch.

Next time I want to check out the upper falls too. The lower falls were closed. And I would DEFINITELY go on a week day morning to avoid crowds. Its a well known spot for sure.

Me and my son! He was a little scared to get close to the falls. I love how the focus is on the falls and we are blurred.

Thanks for coming a long! Hopefully I will be doing more waterfall posts soon because I was so inspired and it was such a breathtaking, exhilarating hike.