Henline Falls Hike

Overview

NOTICE: Trails in this area were affected by the 2020 Beachie Creek Fire. Please check current closures in the Willamette National Forest before planning an outing. Featuring a 125-foot waterfall and an abandoned mine shaft, Henline Falls is a scenic and worthwhile destination for an easy day hike in the Little North Santiam River area. At less than two miles round trip and with only 200 feet of elevation gain, this is a great hike for families, provided you keep the children away from steep drop offs. The abandoned adit of the Silver King Mine burrows into the cliff on the right side of the falls and is now blocked by a bat gate. Sign in at the wilderness permit box at the trailhead and head up the Henline Falls Trail #3348. Join an old road bed, formerly FR2209-301, lined by red alder in a Douglas-fir/western hemlock forest with a salal, Oregon grape, and sword fern carpet. Pass a road track leading up to the right and then reach the unsigned Henline Falls-Ogle Mountain Trail Junction. Keep left here and reach the old trailhead with a sign for the Henline Falls Trail. This wide trail, once a tramway to the Silver King Mine, drops past some large Douglas-firs and then rises gently. Pass the junction with a user trail that rises steeply up the slope to the top of Henline Falls. Drop to the area of Henline Falls, squeezing past the concrete foundation of the Silver King Mine’s power plant and water wheel, once fed by a flume whose brackets are still attached to the monkey-flowered rock face above the trail. Henline Falls is a wonderful spot. The falls descend approximately 125 feet as a wide curtain of water into a beautiful green pool that is very typical of the Little North Fork/Opal Creek area. At the base of the falls there is a logjam which has created a number of small but deep green pools. There are various vantage points for viewing the 125-foot falls: the best may be from below the plunge pool and log jam. While a torrential flow might seem grand, the view will be obscured by spray and it will be

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Photos

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