A Study in Black and White
Dukes Creek Falls is a gorgeous waterfall in northeast Georgia with a trailhead off of the Richard B. Russell scenic highway.
The day before Easter, I wanted to go for another hike, but I also had plans to hang out with my nephew in the early afternoon, so I needed to make it a short one, and one near to my brother’s house. This led me to Dukes Creek Falls, in North Georgia, just north of Helen.
I had seen the entrance to this trailhead many times before, on my way to other hikes off of the Richard B. Russell scenic highway, such as Raven Cliff Falls. However, I had never seen fit to try it out. In the end, I’m very glad I took the chance, on a chilly morning.
The hike itself is only just over a mile in, and not particularly difficult. The trail starts off on a paved track that leads to an observation deck after about .1 miles. The observation deck is part of a series of wooden bridges that navigate the slopes alongside of the road up to the trailhead.
The observation deck provides a nice view of the falls, but from a fair distance. I would imagine that for those not particularly suited for hiking, this is an easy way to see the waterfall. However, although it is not a bad view, I heartily recommend going all the way to the base of the falls.
The wooden bridges, platforms and stairs continue on for another few couple of tenths of a mile. Then, the stairs end at an unpaved trail, which appears to be a T-junction. I didn’t check to the right, as the trail seemed most likely to go to the left. I could already hear the sound of the falls off in that direction.
The trail then followed Dukes Creek, which was a fairly swift flowing creek, with many small rapids and falls. This goes on for some time, and can be a bit disorienting, because you can hear the main waterfall, but the trail appears to go right on past the falls. I had begun to wonder if I had gone the right direction. Luckily, there was enough signal for me to pull up a trail map, which confirmed that I was on the correct path.
The trail, in many ways, is one big switchback. I got to the cusp of the trail, where it switched back towards the waterfall, and headed downwards. Up until that point, the trail had been pretty level, but now, the trail was going down in elevation. It wasn’t very steep, but it did move downwards steadily.
Eventually, I got to the bottom, where there is a series of wooden observation platforms and stairs down to the ground right at the base of this confluence of many different cascades and waterflows. Standing at the base of the steps, there is water flowing all around, and the rushing sound is impressive and wonderful.
There is the high fall that navigates down the far slope in multiple streams, but to the right of that are wider, shallower cascades that speed around the rocks. The water swirls around, each cascade feeding the chaos until the water empties out into the creek that flows away to the left. The effect is beautiful and powerful, and left me wondering why I had never gone there before.
I spent some time there, getting multiple photographs of everything I could see. I had decided while on the trail that I was going to experiment with rendering these images in black and white, rather than color. The texture of the roots and trees that I had already taken pictures of seemed to be well suited to a value-oriented approach. The falls only strengthened my convictions in that. I hope that the black and white images that I present here justify my decision.
Anyway, after I spent that time, I headed back up and out of the valley. By this point, the chill in the air was burning off and the temperature was warm and pleasant. I went all the way back out and then Uncle Sean drove off to play trains and trucks.
