Hiking Donut Falls

So I've been wanting to hike Donut Falls for a really long time. Last year for our anniversary we tried it out, but we had Cailyn with us so going up to the falls was out of the question (those rocks aren't really kid friendly). I decided we had to try it at some point this summer and today we had the perfect opening.

The hike itself is fairly easy. Although I will say at one point I wanted to stop for water, but these high school girls we were following stopped for a minute and as we passed by I heard one of them say "Oh I'm so out of shape." I thought well now I have to keep going...if I'm in better shape than high school girls then I'm doing good haha. Although once we got to the top I ended up chugging a whole bottle in about 30 seconds, but it felt good knowing I didn't stop once.

I LOVE being in the mountains!

We didn't realize you could drive up the road a little to the parking lot for the trail head so we "hiked" a bit longer than expected. But it was worth it. We got a nice parking spot, plus a lot of people were getting tickets when we came back down.

I would NEVER encourage carving trees (it's just wrong!)
But I found my initials in the woods :)

I'm so glad we decided to try this one again. The falls are something you can't miss. We did see some young kids climbing on the rocks up to the cave (I'd say they were probably 5-6 years old), but it was pretty slick so I don't know that I'd recommend it. I wore the shoes we got for Kings Peak so they grasped the rocks and logs pretty well. Plus I felt I could walk through the water a lot easier.

Donut Falls! So pretty

 I guess it's not really recommended to hike above the falls, but we tried it. In fact, we found this little nook where we could stop for lunch and no one was there. Plus we saw lots of chipmunks and birds up there so it was fun (there were a TON of chipmunks up on this trail when we went. We saw a lot playing with each other and two were rough housing a bit right in front of us haha). We probably had a good half an hour up there before others decided to come up and by that point we were ready to head down anyways. Once we were down we noticed quite a few people went up there so we really lucked out (we didn't even head up for this hike until 1 so I'm surprised it wasn't more busy/crowded)

View from above the falls

Weird angle, but you can see the hole the water goes into here

Lunch time

I ate before we left so this was all I needed

The blue and green in this picture
Amazes me! No filter was on this either

Cute couple selfie
I forgot sunscreen, but I'm pretty sure I'm just red from being flushed

 

 

Overall I'd recommend this hike to just about anyone. It's not too difficult so any hiking skills aren't needed you just have to be able to climb up the rocks. I just played follow the leader for that so it wasn't too bad. Coming down is more difficult though, so keep that in mind. This made me look forward to more hikes this summer! Hopefully the warm weather lasts through August and into September.