Beecher and Pearl Cascades
— — two small falls the brook is in no hurry to leave.
Not only on a wall.
“Two short waterfalls on Crawford Brook, reached by a quiet branch off the Avalon Trail above the AMC Highland Center in Crawford Notch. Beecher Cascade comes first, a clean drop into a mossed pool; Pearl Cascade sits a little higher, where the brook breaks into smaller braids over slabs of schist. They are not the loud falls of the White Mountains. The walk is short, the rhododendron leans in over the water, and the noise level drops as soon as you leave the road. from the studio
Beecher and Pearl Cascades, 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.
Beecher and Pearl Cascades are two small waterfalls on Crawford Brook, a tributary that feeds the Saco River through Crawford Notch in the southern White Mountains. They are reached on a short loop branching from the Avalon Trail, which begins behind the Appalachian Mountain Club's Highland Center at the height of Crawford Notch, in the town of Carroll. The pair lies inside the White Mountain National Forest, roughly half a mile in along an easy grade, and is one of the gentlest near-trailhead waterfall walks in the Notch.
Crawford Brook drops over banded schist and granite in two steps. Beecher Cascade, the lower of the two, falls about fifteen feet into a clear pool ringed with hemlock roots. A few minutes higher, Pearl Cascade breaks the brook into braided ribbons across slab — quieter, more glassy, the kind of sound that flattens conversation. Both run hardest from snowmelt in late April through June and shrink to a thin trickle by late summer in a dry year.
The trailhead sits across US Route 302 from the Highland Center, about twenty minutes north of Bretton Woods. Parking is free in the Crawford Depot lot, which fills early on summer weekends. The loop to both cascades runs roughly one mile round trip with about two hundred feet of climb, and connects upward to Mount Avalon and Mount Field for longer days. Footing is rooty and wet near the brook; light traction is useful from November through April.