Tarbell Trail to Hidden Falls, Jun 14th

After the long hard hike I did on Saturday, I started this one having second thoughts as I was already tired. Lucky for me I guess is that I had people waiting for me to do this hike which, by its description sounded interesting and not very hard. The Tarbell trail is a loop on the Northwest side of Silver Star Mountain; in fact, you can reach the summit from this trail. Our plan for the day though did not include that. The idea was just to get to Hidden Falls and back. Besides going to “Hidden Falls” which sounds interesting enough, the other thing that picked my mind about this trail is its history. It seems that way back there was a mister George Tarbell that lives in the area. He was an old hermit living by himself up in the mountain looking for gold and cultivating the land. His only communication with the outside world was a faint 6 mile trail that lead to an old wagon road. Today there are no remains of where he lived or the wagon road, but the trail is fairly the same hence the name. AS you’ll see in the pictures, the trail starts by crossing a clear cut area and soon after gets into the forest. From there, it wonders passing through areas with tall trees and some open areas with wildflowers. At some point you get to a bridge that gives you a clear view of Hidden Falls, a very nice water fall almost carved in the rocks. Since this was our destination, it was also a perfect place for lunch. I took some extra time for pictures which you’ll see below before we headed back to the car.

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