Great Falls at high water

A few weeks ago (because I'm terrible about updating on time), I got a message from a friend I had met in Bend.  She had also become expatriated from the Outdoorist's Ideal, and happened to be visiting someone else in our area, so we planned to meet for a hike and lunch.  Her only condition was that I bring Summit Cookies, because she had become accustomed to that tradition after four years of hiking and snowshoeing together.  It was a small price to pay.

There are usually more rocks here, and often a few kayakers.

We decided to hike around at Great Falls for a while; The Girl knows the trails there well enough to allow us to wander for a bit and still ensure we could get back in time for my friend's flight home, and hopefully lunch.

"That oooold browwwn waterrrrr."

If you're familiar with Great Falls, you'll know by the pictures that the water was much higher than usual during our visit.  If you're not familiar with Great Falls, the dark brown color of the water should be a pretty good clue that we were well above the normal flow level.  Close to the river, we had to speak up to hear each other.

a small side creek flowing into the Potomac

It was also a bit colder than usual, which worked to our advantage.  Most of the time, Great Falls is packed with people because it's easy to reach from the city, gorgeous, and offers lots of hiking options.  There are very easy, flat trails, and there are rockier paths that allow a little bit of scrambling.  For the more adventurous,  there's also a lot of rock climbing.  I've never been to Great Falls to climb, but we've seen people climbing on every trip.  Even on this cold, high-water day, we saw a group rappelling from the top of one of the cliffs.

An icy pool that isn't usually there.

I wasn't able to get very good pictures, but we saw a wake of buzzards feeding on ... something in the woods.  We had spotted them because a couple were circling above, and several were perched in trees.  When we got closer, we saw the larger group still on the ground.  They were only about twenty yards from the trail, and were completely uninterested in the scattered humans that came by to point and take pictures.  We were ready to move on when we noticed a pileated woodpecker on a fallen log right beside the buzzards.  It was the only wildlife we saw, but it was conveniently located in the same place.

The same icy pool, without the extreme zoom.

Our summit cookies were actually eaten at the lowest point of the hike, where Difficult Run flows into the Potomac, but nobody complained about the impropriety.  We also had some of the muffins left over from breakfast that morning, but that was just pack food.  Our grand finale was lunch at a Persian place, with exotic yogurt drinks and some dark red spice whose name eludes me, but which I put on everything.