Being the leader of the Hiking Meetup group, I’ve been getting emails recently requesting shorter, closer to town, later, easier hikes. Knowing I was going to be a bit tired after the 25 mile bike ride on Saturday, I decide to finally go to Eagle Creek and take a group up to High Bridge. Eagle Creek is, next to Multnomah falls one of the most visited trails in the Columbia Gorge. Unless you do this trail in the middle of the night, you can be certain you will see other groups of people. Not only that, this trail offers the opportunity of making it as long or as short as you want and you still can get beautiful views. For this group High Bridge sounded like a perfect distance and elevation gain. So we started at around 11AM doing a nice stroll alongside the Eagle Creek. Soon after starting, we noticed that the trail is actually carved from the hillside rocks. As you climb, there are portions of it with a cable hand rail and sheer cliffs that overlook the gorge formed by the creek. One of the big features of this hike is Punchbowl falls which you can descend to. Once down at the creek level, you can admire the rock formations on both sides and the waterfall up ahead. This waterfall is also visible from above. Continuing on, you get to High Bridge which is a bridge (duh) that crosses the gorge. Once you look down from it, you’ll realize where the “high” comes from! It even makes you wonder how where they able to put it there. This bridge just hangs from both side of the gorge which is formed by two vertical rock walls that drop a couple hundred feet to the creek down below. In one of the pictures you’ll see the bridge on the top part and the creek all the way to the bottom. Really impressive. After a lunch break we headed back to the cars doing the same route.
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