Silver Falls State Park in Oregon - Trail of Ten Falls

Silver Falls State Park is the largest park in the Oregon State Parks system (9,000 acres, 3,642 hectares) and features one of the most impressive waterfall day hikes in the US.  There are ten waterfalls on the 7.8 mile (12.6 km) loop, many of which the path goes behind, in addition to more than 35 miles (56 km) of backcountry trails for mountain biking, hiking, or horseback riding (beware the bears and cougars living in the more remote park areas).  We're exploring a little of Oregon and head over to hike the fails

We park and walk toward the first falls, Upper North Falls.

Upper North Falls

Backtracking, we start down Canyon Trail, descending into the canyon and looping past the other waterfalls, starting with the first one that we can walk behind, North Falls.

Descending to the canyon floor

North Falls

View from behind the falls

Continuing along the trail, we reach Twin Falls, then Middle North Falls, another we can walk behind.

Continuing along the canyon floor

Twin Falls

Middle North Falls

We then pass Drake Falls, Double Falls, and Lower North Falls.

Drake Falls

Double Falls

Lower North Falls

After Lower North Falls, a bridge takes us across the water and we follow the stream to Lower South Falls (again walking behind the falls) and then up from the canyon floor toward  South Falls.

Crossing the bridge and continuing along the stream

Lower South Falls

South Falls

We follow the trail up from South Falls and walk along the stream leading to the falls back to the parking lot for

The top of South Falls

As we get to then end, we realize that our fall count is nine.  We missed Winter Falls which is down a separate Winter Falls Trail.  But, we've still seen many great waterfalls and had a spectacular hike with  an incredibly scenic few hours, especially actually walking behind many of the falls and viewing them from a different perspective.