Abiqua Falls

This is Abiqua Falls, in Marion County, Oregon. It’s a 92-foot waterfall that punges into a wonderful basaltic amphitheater that’s like a natural cathedral. This was my WWP “Best of 2011” entry.

(Click here to view the interactive picture in a new tab.)

Unlike many other waterfalls in Oregon, this one is not regarded as a tourist attraction. Although open to the public for recreational purposes, it is on private land owned by the Mount Angel Abbey. The area is completely undeveloped, except for the rough trail. I’ve seen pictures from the top of the falls, but have no idea how to get there. Although the waterfall itself is simple, the surroundings are spectacular.

Access to the falls themselves requires travel along several miles of rough fire roads (four-wheel drive recommended), a steep climb down into the stream gorge, and multiple scrambles over boulders and fallen trees. The trek is worth it though!

Warning sign at trailhead.

The challenge of scrambling in to take this picture was compounded by lugging my VR equipment, and by being unprepared for the amount of time needed. (It was pretty warm, even before noon.)

Still, it was a lot of fun and turned out ok. There was some challenge getting the picture done before the sun rose any further. If it were a little higher, then the shot would have been taken at a much more oblique angle.

As it was, I had to take pictures at a number of different exposures in order to have the whole dynamic range captured well. For this shot, I tried something new: taking six up and six down, +/- 30 degrees, instead of 6 down at -15 degrees, with one last straight up. Although this results in more pictures, they sometimes stitch much more cleanly. And for this shot I bracketed +/- 4 stops, resulting in a total of 108 pictures to make this VR.

It may not be clear where the river exits the amphitheater into a gorge, or where the trail enters. Looking away from the fall, the river enters the gorge on the left. Water on the right just goes into a little lagoon. You can see the layout pretty clearly on Google maps. By the time the trail winds down the gorge to the waterfall, it’s over rock, so there’s no real trace of a path.

I think the shadows have too much blue tint, and some of the green foliage is blown out. Took a fair amount of hand tweaking to get it this good, but plenty of room for improvement. Made a reasonable WWP entry, which you can see here.

As part of the series of waterfalls, this one may make a nice metaphor for eternal truths by thinking of the waters as picturing the divine presence. For example, consider the amphitheater’s obscure exit. Looking around casually, it’s hard to see the exit. But it’s clear that the water knows the way out, so our best bet is to follow the stream. Similarly, we are often in situations in which the “way out” is unclear. Or even just the way forward. And like those cases, our best bet is to follow the divine stream. Staying close to the water gives us direction. This builds on the Christian picture of “living water”, and the guidance that His followers can receive on a regular basis. May take a little image editing, but this might just work.