Day 39: Weekend waterfalls

Waterfalls. How can you not love waterfalls? We'd first visited Cypress Falls park a few years ago and somehow had walked away not feeling particularly inspired. The Lower Falls were nice, but the view point wasn't that great, and we never did find the Upper Falls. Yet for some reason I felt that today was the day to revisit. We drove over to the park in West Vancouver and ambled gently uphill through the trees, gradually wending our way to the precipitous banks of Cypress Creek, running in a deep, narrow canyon.

The trail led further upstream, passing an ominous sign disclaiming all liability, and we soon found ourselves face-to-face with the Upper Falls, a single cascade dropping perhaps 15 m into a deep pool before squeezing through the chasm below. Carefully, we picked our way down the slippery slope to get the optimum view. Impressive falls, for sure, and I'm mystified as to how we didn't find them last time.

Heading back downstream we followed the creek, passing more huge Douglas firs on our way to the Lower Falls overlook. The view there was pretty good, the Lower Falls being slightly higher than the Upper Falls, but the canyon narrowed immediately below the falls, which limited the view. Once again, some very careful footwork was required to get the best view, complete with mossy rocks and trees. When we got home we found that the photo in Dawn Hanna's book, "Best Hikes and Walks in Southwestern British Columbia", was taken from exactly the same spot that we'd picked our way down to. Personally, I think ours is better, despite their rainbow :-)

Lower Cypress Falls