November 16, 2015 - DuPont State Forest - Hike to Bridal Veil Falls and the Bridal Veil Overlook Trail

We decided to head back to DuPont State Forest today and made Bridal Veil Falls our destination. We had never hiked in via Buck Forest Rd and I wanted to add that route to the web site. Plus, I was hoping to get some decent video all up and down the sloped rock part of the falls. See this page of my site for more info on getting to the waterfall.

It was a beautiful day to be out with the forecast calling for partly cloudy skies. One of the great things about hiking during the week is there are no crowds. Two people were at the waterfall when we got there and they were leaving, so we had the place to ourselves the entire time we were there. We spent a lot of time around the base area of the waterfall. Cindy had just bought 3 colored filters and was playing around with different black and white looks and I was shooting both stills and video - mostly video though. I had brought my GoPro along for video, but also shoot video with my still camera and all that can be time consuming. Below are a couple of stills from the area, then a GoPro video.

Bridal Veil Falls from the viewing platform

view from the rocks in front of the waterfall

 

During normal water flow, the bedrock on the left side of the waterfall is dry and you can easily get up there and walk up to the top section of the waterfall. As you can see in the video, that wasn't happening today because that rock was all wet. It's a little steeper than it looks at the first part and that rock is very slippery when it gets wet.  Since we couldn't go up top, we had time for some more hiking and decided to do the Bridal Veil Overlook Trail. One review of the trail said there were views of the surrounding mountains with Bridal Veil Falls below. We began that hike on the Corn Mill Shoals Trail which begins (or ends) right at the end of Bridal Veil Falls Rd where we were. This hike begins as a single lane path through the woods and probably gets more mountain bike traffic than foot traffic. The Bridal Veil Overlook Trail is off of this trail and heads up the access road for the huge power lines that run through DuPont. The trail then crosses under the lines and heads up to a very small rock outcropping and the view. The view was very disappointing - very little of the waterfall could be seen and we could also see where the DuPont plant once stood. Maybe that's why we couldn't find any photos online from that view.

views from the Bridal Veil Overlook