Franklin Falls below Snoqualmie Pass
— — the cold spray the pass throws downhill.
Not only on a wall.
“A roadside waterfall that doesn't read as roadside until you're standing in the spray. The South Fork Snoqualmie drops in three steps off the basalt below Snoqualmie Pass, the lowest about seventy feet. The trail is short from Denny Creek Road, just off Exit 47. In winter the falls hold ice in their lower scallops and snowshoers come the whole way up. In June the spray is loud enough to drown out the highway above the rim.
Franklin Falls below Snoqualmie Pass, on ceramic.
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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.
Franklin Falls is a three-tiered waterfall on the South Fork Snoqualmie River in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, immediately below Snoqualmie Pass in the Washington Cascades. The total drop is about 135 feet across three steps; the lowest tier, the one most visitors stop at, is roughly 70 feet. The trail begins at Denny Creek Road off Exit 47 of Interstate 90, about an hour east of Seattle. The falls were named for Walter Franklin, a homesteader in the Denny Creek area in the 1880s. Above the upper tier, I-90 itself crosses the river on a tall concrete bridge.
The South Fork Snoqualmie drops over a stair of basalt, fed by snowmelt from the ridges above the pass. Flow peaks in May and June, when the pool at the foot of the lower tier sends a constant cold spray onto the viewing area. By late summer the flow narrows but the falls do not dry. In January and February the falls partially freeze, with sheets of ice growing across the lower scallops; the trail becomes a popular snowshoe and microspike route. The water continues west out of the pass toward the Snoqualmie Valley and the Puget Sound lowlands.
This is one of the rare Cascade waterfalls equally rewarding in summer and deep winter. The summer trail is friendly to families: roughly two miles round trip from the upper Denny Creek lot, with about 400 feet of elevation gain. In winter the road closes at a lower gate, doubling the distance and turning the approach into a snowshoe. The frozen scallops on the lower tier are the photograph people drive Snoqualmie Pass for in February. A Northwest Forest Pass is required at the trailhead in any season the road is open.