Palouse Falls
LaCrosse, WA
Washington's official state waterfall drops 198 feet into a circular basalt plunge pool carved by Ice Age floods, in a canyon that seems to appear from nowhere in the rolling wheat country of the Palouse. The upper viewpoint looks straight down the canyon as the river snakes away toward the Snake. Spring runoff turns the falls into a thundering column framed by green hills.
Photography Guide
- Best Time
- golden hour
- Crowds
- Moderate
- Shot Types
- widelong exposurelandscape
- Best Seasons
- springsummer
Is it a good day to go?
7-day outlookMild, dry days with light winds are the most comfortable for a visit.
Forecast by Open-Meteo. Verdicts weigh the forecast against the conditions that suit this spot.
Author's Comments
You drive for an hour through wheat fields that roll like a slow ocean, and then the ground simply falls away. That is the thing about Palouse Falls that no photograph quite prepares you for. The canyon does not announce itself. It is not there and then it is, a two hundred foot gash in the scablands, a perfect circular plunge pool at the bottom of a column of water that has been carrying itself over that lip since the Ice Age floods carved the whole strange geometry. Come in May. The runoff is at its loudest and the surrounding hills are still green, which they will not be by July. The falls in August are a sad thin ribbon and the canyon reads as bones without flesh. In spring it thunders. The upper viewpoint is the one everyone uses and it is the right one. From there the Palouse River bends away from the pool and snakes down the canyon toward the Snake, and if you time it for the last hour before sunset the whole basin fills with warm light while the eastern wall goes into deep shadow. That contrast is the photograph. A long exposure softens the column into something closer to smoke, which I like some evenings and resist on others depending on how much I want the water to feel like the force it actually is. Stay behind the railings. I mean this. The cliff trails beyond the fence have killed people and the view from the sanctioned overlook is already the view. If you can stay past dark, stay. The sky out here is genuinely black, and the Milky Way rises over the canyon in a way that makes the drive back feel like a reluctant thing.
Gallery
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