Its hiking time

Hi
Its been a long time i blogged. Many things were happening in life and got drifted with time. I had a son Rishi in 2007 and now he is 18 months old. Quite a change in life. I had little forced vacation in India, while i was going through lots of uncertainties. Well we are back to Oregon and settling down. Summer is a great time here for hiking and wonderful scenaries.
SO to break the monotonous schedule I and Ramya decided to start hiking every week end with our 18 month old. We both love nature and trying to make Rishi also interested in this. So far we have done four hikes together and one on my own.
We live in the suberb of Portland, Oregon. THere is a beautiful river flows through Portland called Willamette and merges with Columbia river couple of miles north of the city. Columbia river gorge cuts through cascade mountains and divides Oregon and Washington states. This columbia river gorge is the amazing place anyone will fall in love immediately. In fact i was so moved by the place and is one of the reasons i moved here. SO first three hikes we did in Columbia gorge.

Horse Tail-Pony tail - Oneanta Creek Hike

Horse tail falls is in the columbia gorge national scenic highway past the famous Multinomah falls and Oneanta gorge. From one side, it looks like a horse tail, hence the name.

Location: Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, Multnomah Falls, Oneonta Gorge, Multnomah County
Height: 176 ft. Upper falls : 72 ft
Distance:40 miles from Beaverton
Elevation:
Season: year-round
Difficulty:Easy
Direction to Trailhead: The Horetail Falls trailhead is just 30 miles east of Portland on the Columbia River Scenic Highway. From Portland Drive 35 miles east on I84 to Exit 3/Ainsworth State Park exit, then go west on the Scenic Highway to Horsetail Falls. Park on the north side of the freeway. You can also get there by following the Scenic Highway past Multnomah falls headed east. The trailhead is on the south side of the road right next to Horsetail falls.

The lower falls is quite forceful and you can enjoy the shower on a warm day or after a good hike. The upper falls is called pony tail falls, in regards to its size i guess, it has a path behind the falls under a rocky out growth. It is 0.5miles hike to the upper falls from lower falls with lots of switch backs and a 560ft elevation gain. Past the upper falls the trail takes you around the mountain and into the Oneanta creek. In this trail, there is an excellent view point facing the columbia gorge for colourful pictures. If you continue on the trail for another 1/2 a mile you come to this upper oneanta falls and just before that a fenceless view point of Oneanta creek. If you cross the wooden bridge over oneanta falls, the trail continues on to triple falls. But we stopped our hike up to this point. It was 1 1/4 mile oneway and took us 1 1/2 hrs for us to complete the hike. Forgot to mention, i was carrying Rishi, my 18 month old in a snuggli. I as well as he, along with Ramya enjoyed this hike. This craved us for future hikes, which i will be updating in my forthcoming bloggs.