Ramona Falls in Mount Hood National Forest is a popular destination, and you can see why. Which is why I was quite surprised by the difficult road to get there.
For a hike with thousands of reviews online, the road to access it was probably the worst I’ve ever been on. It seems like it could be one of the original asphalt roads ever in existence. In sections, it’s fine. In others, there’s just a narrow strip of asphalt left, with a huge cavity on either side where the road used to be.
And this wasn’t because it had recently washed out or anything. No, it’s just not maintained whatsoever. It’s so bad, in fact, that on the way out we saw many sedans pulled over to the side of the road, simply without enough clearance to go any further. Their owners had no choice but to add several miles to their hike to Ramona Falls.
The hike itself is beautiful. It’s a slow ascent through the moss-laden rainforest of the Pacific Northwest to an absolutely epic waterfall. The falls are so impressive that the temperature drops noticeably once you get down into the waterfall coulee. We were there long enough to actually get chilled to the bone, even though the sun was shining and the daytime high was 26°C, which we were approaching by the time we started our hike out late in the morning.
From a photography standpoint, I had planned the timing of our visit pretty carefully. I wanted to arrive mid-morning, when the sun would crest the ridge behind and beside the falls and create rays through the mist. We timed it pretty well, and when the sunlight started breaking through, it transformed the scene. The mist coming off the falls gave the light something to work with, creating those shafts of light that I had hoped to capture.
So yes, Ramona Falls is definitely worth visiting. Just make sure your vehicle can handle the road getting there. And if you’re going primarily to photograph it, I’d plan your timing around when the sun reaches the ridge above the falls rather than simply showing up in the middle of the day.
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