Fall is Fun – Hawthorne Falls

PHOTO: Becca near the pool at the base of Hawthorne Falls. The pretty 40 foot tall terraced waterfall hides in its little box canyon a good mile away from the Gale River Trail. There is no path to reach the Falls. The stream bed will guide you there but the bushwhack is rugged and very tough. Few people visit here. 

by Amy Patenaude
Outdoor/Ski Writer

I love nearly everything about the Fall season but I dislike the length of the days. (I’ll leave it to Brendan to write about the leaf-peepers messing up traffic.) The days are getting too short.
Every day we are losing about two and a half minutes of daylight.
There is more darkness than daylight now! There’s less time to play outside.
I do love the cool weather, no bugs and the change of the landscape. The foliage may not be as bright as it has been in other less wet years but it fills me with joy to see the hillsides rippled with gold and red.
Becca wanted to get off the beaten path and visit a waterfall. Hawthorne Falls is on the
northeast side of Mountain Garfield.

I was a tad off the back and didn’t get to the Gale River Trail parking area until after 9 am.
The lot was already overflowing onto the roadside but I managed to squeeze into the lot’s last
place. I gathered my gear and started jogging up the trail. Becca was ahead of me and I told her
I’d catch up if I was late.
Two miles up the trail right after the stream crossing of the West Fork of the North Branch of
the Gale River I left the trail and entered the woods.
From now on I’d be following the east bank all the way to the Falls. For a while it felt like I was following a herd path but it quickly turned into slow-going bushwhacking–lots of downed trees
and big rocks to get over and around.
I wandered into the streambed that was flowing down wide granite ledges and looked up and
down. The Mountain Ash’s red berries dotted the banks and the Beech tree’s leaves were
mostly gold.

The cascading water was loud. I yelled for Becca but I didn’t hear anything in return.
I continued on and soon I saw her light blue backpack up ahead. I got a little closer and I
yelled again. But she didn’t turn around. I got close and yelled again. This time she jumped in
the air and told me I scared her. She explained that even though she knew I was coming and
she often turned around to look for me, I had still startled her. Yes, I thought it was funny and
good thing I didn’t growl or bark. Becca would not have thought it was funny.
We continued on and we pulled away from the edge of the bank and into more open woods.
When we popped out back on the stream bank it was very flat and the water below was extra
loud. I knew we had walked past the Falls. I knew too because this is exactly what I did four
years ago. But it was fun to climb to the top and look down on the Falls and into the narrow
gorge.
We climbed back down and battled our way to the bottom of the Falls. We carefully made our
way onto the ledgy streambed and up to the pool. This day it wasn’t warm enough to go
swimming and we both were happy to not go swimming by mistake.
The seat pads we carried were put to good use keeping us dry while we sat in the gorge next
to the pool. We watched the loud cascading water and we ate our lunch.
We were feeling pretty content and since it was only Noon I talked Becca into one more thing.
Let’s bushwhack up to Flat Top Mountain. This peak is really the big north shoulder of Garfield
but it has some prominence.

Downstream we hiked and when we found a place we could cross the water and climb up the
other side, up we went. I pulled out my compass but we didn’t really use it to guide us. We just
kept going up the path of least resistance. On the steep climb we did well finding mostly open
woods and a lot of moose paths. On the Flat Top summit ridge we crossed it to the north and
found the highpoint. We found a small open ledge that gave us an unexpected great view of
Garfield, the Ridge and the Twins–it was marvelous. We could even spy the roof of the
Galehead Hut.
There was also a large boulder sitting on top of the mountain and a brown bunny rabbit came
running by us. We liked the top of Flat Top Mountain.
Instead of going back down the way we came we decided to adventure more and bushwhack
to the north and then back east to hit the trail again lower down. This seemed like a great idea
for the first half hour but the moose paths disappeared and the trees got tighter.

“Uh-Oh.” I was standing on top of a ledge that I didn’t even see until I nearly stepped off its lip.
This unexpected ledge was in the middle of the widest contour line of our map. The ledge was
at least 15 feet high. I peered over it and I looked. The ledge reached far in both directions. But
just in front of me there was a narrow gangplank of ledge that angled down most of the way and
then a tree that would be handy to lower ourselves the rest of the way.
Our bushwhack was slow going and just when we thought we were rejoining the trail. I led us
right into a wet hole surrounded by a jumble of blown down trees. The next 15 minutes were the
toughest of the day.
Back on the trail we felt like we were flying down to the car.
It was a good bushwhack, we got out before dark.

Have Fun.