Three Falls

With the kids in Texas but coming out to visit this summer, I’ve been trying to find fun hikes I can take them on when they are out here and, at the same time, stay in shape and stay busy.

Saturday was going to be my last day off for about 12 days so I decided to see if I could get a friend of mine, Dan Lackey, who also volunteers at Coral Canyon, to help me find a good place to hike. Dan is very knowledgeable about many local hikes and has also been looking for a hiking partner for quite sometime.

I had heard of the 3 falls hike before, so when Dan had mentioned it during our previous hike, I asked him if we could do it today. I figured with all the rain we had received in the first 3 months of the year, the waterfalls would be beautiful.

We met at the trail head at 9:00, which is at the end of the cul-de-sac at 120 west and about 400 south in Hurricane. It’s a little difficult to find, if you don’t know what you’re looking for as there is no marked trail head, just a trail leading down to what I’m told is usually a dry river bed, at the end of the cul-de-sac.

Dan mentioned that he had done this hike about 5 or 6 times before but that this was the first time he had seen water in the river bottom. A small river was running in the usually dry bed, and in spots it made hiking difficult as we tried to avoid getting our feet wet. We stayed on the north side of the river, many times climbing high out of the river bed through low hanging trees.

After maybe a half mile, we came to the first set of falls. It’s amazing how water can make a hike so much different - as I tried to imagine this hike with no water, I imagined a fun hike, but with out the additional beauty the water added.

Once to the falls, we climbed steeply up to the left in a little drainage area. Up to this point, I would feel very comfortable taking both my 4 and 2 year olds on this hike, but they would struggle with this next part. My out-of-shape legs felt a burn a lot earlier than they normally would, but we had soon bypassed the falls.

There is a really pretty area right on top of the falls to watch the water go through some narrow slots as it prepares to go down the falls. I took some time exploring this area and even took a few pictures.

We continued on our way up the canyon to what we assumed would be another falls up ahead. We passed a few old car parts from where people used to drive their cars up to the cliffs up above and then push their cars down. We were able to spot 3 cars on the ledges up above that never made it all the way down to the bottom.

After about another half mile we could see the top of the final water fall. As we got closer, we could see how big this one was and could hear the power of the water crashing down into the pool and onto the rock hundreds of feet below.

I got as close as I could to the pool where the water was crashing down, with out getting bogged don in the wet mud surrounding the area. The cool mist, made an already cool morning, almost frosty! So I took some quick pictures and quickly retreated.

We hiked back out, retracing our steps. The hardest part being trying to remember the places that we had crossed the river, many times having to backtrack to rock hop across it. We passed a boy scout troop from Cedar City, who was looking for a place to camp to get out of the snow up there.

After about 2.5 miles and an hour and a half, we returned to our cars. Dan recommended driving up above the canyon we had just hiked in, so we hopped in his truck, drove up a rough dirt road and finally came to the spot where cars were once driven off the cliff. We had a great view from above of the final large waterfall. It was a spectacular view!

Overall, the hike is a great hike! Small kids would have a great time hiking to the first falls, and with a lot of help, could probably make it to the larger falls as well.