Urban Landscape, Native Landscape: Wahkeena Falls

Friday, December 6, 2013

Wahkeena Falls

Wahkeena Falls December 2012

Wahkeena Falls can be found along the Columbia River Gorge in Multnomah County, Oregon. It is not far from the City of Portland, on the Historic Columbia River Highway. A short trail from the parking lot leads to a stone bridge crossig the main part of the falls. The trail continues east to Multnomah Falls, where there is a much larger parking lot, & a lodge with a restaurant & restrooms. Although Multnomah Falls is more famous & has a longer drop, I think Wahkeena Falls is more immediate & exciting. You can get quite close to the water, which sends great clouds of mist across the bridge. The rock formations remind me of a Chinese scroll painting. It is also much less crowded with tourists. But please see both falls while you are here. You can walk or drive between them. The falls are most abundant in winter & spring.

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About This Blog

This blog began in 2008 as Metropolitan Gardens to provide information on gardening in Seattle & places like it. Click on Gardening in Cascadia. The blog expanded to include Parks P-Patches Public Gardens in the US, Canada & Europe. Then Nature was added. (The difference between nature & gardens is intent. Nature happens. Gardens are planned.) Many recent posts are not about Seattle, or even Cascadia. They are Urban Landscape: streetscape & architecture. Cascadia is the region including the Cascade Mountains of Washington & Oregon. If you want to contact the blogger, leave a message in comments. Comments are moderated & private messages will not be posted.

Our Land & Climate

The city of Seattle rests between 2 bodies of water: Puget Sound & Lake Washington. Puget Sound is a substantial part of the Salish Sea & a very small part of the Pacific Ocean. The Salish Sea is set apart from the Pacific by the Olympic Peninsula in the state of Washington & Vancouver Island in the province of British Columbia. The dense, wet clouds of the Pacific Ocean travel as far as the Cascade Mountains, near the Salish Sea & not very far from the ocean. East of the Cascades lies the desert of the Columbia Basin. The moist, temperate climate of Seattle extends south to northern California & north to southeastern Alaska. The Pacific Northwest Coast from San Francisco Bay to Cook Inlet shares a flora dominated by evergreen coniferous forest. The central portion, west of the Cascade Mountains, is called Cascadia. The climate is cool & wet from fall to spring, warm & dry in summer. The Olympic Mountains block Seattle from much of the Pacific rainfall. Seattle is drier than the Atlantic coast of North America & northern Europe, cooler in summer & warmer in winter. It lies near the latitude of Paris & Quebec City.