Four Mile Falls

Today's adventure (brought to you by Dan, who had us going, going on this trip),

was a hike to Four-Mile Falls.

This has been on our Pagosa bucket list for a while.

We put the roof down on the Bronco and got an earlyish start

for the one-hour drive to the trailhead.

(About 45 minutes on Plumtaw Road to the turn-off to Four Mile Falls then about a twelve minute drive, passing a lot of cabins along the way.)

The trail starts with a 250' descent then flattens out for the next 2-3 miles.

We saw several leaves of three, but turns out they were wild strawberries and raspberries.

(And proof that "leaves of three" isn't super helpful in avoiding poison ivy.)

Several creek crossings via logs or rocks.

And lots of pretty meadows and wildflowers.

Lots of green rocks like we see at Piedra Falls too.

I really need to get a rock ID kit!

Then suddenly at the two-mile mark, the falls appeared!  With another one off to the left.

And they were breath-taking.

We had a steep hike to get to the base of the steeper, but narrower falls.

Then hiked a little furtur up on a small trail that let us overlook the other falls.

(Stats at the base of the narrow falls.)

We wondered if we'd missed the turnoff to get to the base of the wider falls,

and found what seemed like a trail, but it petered out and we bushwhacked over 

felled logs and streams and through the brush until I said I'd lost my will to go on.

(By this time my hip was KILLING me. I twisted my ankle in mid-Ohio getting out of the RV

literally as we were leaving and I think favoring that ankle tweaked my hip.)

Later we researched and apparently you can't get to the base of the big falls,

which is a bit disappointing.

It was a good hike, with a lot of distance to make up for the mild elevation gain.

I'd love to try it again when my hip is better.

There's even a scenario of taking the hike to the two-mile mark where the falls come into view,

then turning back (since you can't get to the base anyway), then head to town 

with a bit more energy.

The estimated time to the falls trailhead was 1 hour 10 minutes whether you went through town or from Plumtaw road, so we made a circle, so we could eat at Sage's and look at the antique store.

When we got back to camp, we had to start cleaning up and packing to get ready to go home.

Our time in Pagosa has been too short this trip. But I'm glad we found a couple of days to get here!