Trick Falls (Running Eagle Falls) Two Medicine
— — the waterfall that hides a second waterfall.
Not only on a wall.
“A short walk off the Two Medicine road, on Pikuni land at the east edge of Glacier National Park. In spring the upper creek pours over the cliff in the usual way. By midsummer the upper flow dries back and the water comes instead through a cave halfway down the wall, so the falls appear to start from inside the rock. That second falls is why the early guides called it Trick Falls. The Pikuni name honours Pitamakan, the warrior woman who fasted here.
Trick Falls (Running Eagle Falls) Two Medicine, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Running Eagle Falls sits on Two Medicine Creek in the Two Medicine valley of Glacier National Park, just inside the park's eastern boundary on the Blackfeet Reservation. A level trail of roughly a third of a mile leaves the small pullout on the Two Medicine road and reaches the viewing pool in under ten minutes. The falls were renamed in 1981 for Pitamakan, called Running Eagle, the Pikuni woman warrior who is said to have fasted at this site. The valley itself was carved by glaciers and is bounded by Rising Wolf Mountain to the north.
The cliff is roughly forty feet high. In late spring and early summer the upper creek pours over the lip in a single curtain. As the snowpack drains by July the upper flow thins and a second outlet emerges from a cave partway down the wall, fed by groundwater that has cut its own channel through the limestone. For a few weeks the two stages run together. By August the upper curtain is gone and the cave-mouth falls is the only one left, which is why early settlers gave it the name Trick Falls.
Reached from the Two Medicine entrance station off Highway 49, about twelve miles from East Glacier Park. The trail is barrier-free gravel to the viewing pool, suitable for most visitors, and is one of the shortest interpretive walks in the park. The Two Medicine road is typically open from late May through October depending on snow. Bear activity is common in the valley; the National Park Service recommends carrying spray. Two Medicine Lake and its boat dock are two miles further up the road.