Tunnel Falls Eagle Creek
— — a trail that walks behind the water.
Not only on a wall.
“A 175-foot ribbon falling off a basalt cliff on Eagle Creek, and a narrow tunnel blasted behind it in 1915 so the trail can pass through the spray. Six miles up from the trailhead, more on the legs than the map shows. The hike reopened slowly after the 2017 fire. People come back quieter than they left.
Tunnel Falls Eagle Creek, on ceramic.
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The place, in three passes.
Tunnel Falls sits on the East Fork of Eagle Creek, about six miles up the Eagle Creek Trail in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, within Mount Hood National Forest. The drop is roughly 175 feet over columnar basalt. The trail itself was completed in 1915 by the U.S. Forest Service, and a passage was blasted directly through the cliff behind the falls so hikers could continue upstream toward Wahtum Lake.
Eagle Creek drains a long basalt amphitheatre on the Oregon side of the Columbia, and it falls more than once on the way down. Punch Bowl, Loowit, Metlako, and finally Tunnel Falls itself, the highest of the run. The water carries the same cold, mineral clarity as the rest of the Gorge tributaries, fed by snowmelt off the ridges above Wahtum Lake at roughly 3,700 feet of elevation.
The round trip from the Eagle Creek trailhead is about 12 miles with roughly 1,200 feet of elevation gain, and most of the exposure is on cliff edges where the Forest Service has bolted cable handlines into the rock. The trail was closed for years after the September 2017 Eagle Creek Fire and reopened in stages. No fee at the trailhead, but a Northwest Forest Pass is required for parking.