This museum grade fine art photograph is available in a fine art limited edition of 200, signed and numbered with a signed Certificate of Authenticity (COA) provided for additional provenance.
Turquoise Reality - Spirit Falls, Columbia River Gorge and the Little White Salmon River, Washington
Spirit Falls, Little White Salmon River, Columbia River Gorge, Washington
Spirit Falls and the Turquoise Little White Salmon River in the Columbia River Gorge in Washington
The turquoise water of Spirit Falls cascade 33 feet over basalt cliffs in a narrow forested canyon down into a turquoise pool of water below along the Little White Salmon River. The waterfall flows over the edge at a 90 degree pitch here producing multiple side by side drops during normal flow and one, single drop spanning the width of the river at high flow when the river flows over the basalt hump that normally separates the drops. The average flow rate of Spirit Falls is 400 cubic feet per second (CFS), and it's runnable by experienced kayakers when the flow range is between 200-800 CFS.
The waterfall is part of a 4.2 mile Class V+ run along the 19 mile long Little White Salmon River. One of the most challenging parts of the run is just below Spirit Falls, where a Class V rapid aptly named Chaos crashes over the 8 foot Chaos ledge just downstream from Spirit Falls, as seen in my photos Spillway and Liquid Lace.
In 1986, the area was protected by congress when they used the National Scenic Area Act to designate it part of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area in order to safeguard the area from development. Although the area is safe from development, access to the trail down to here is no longer allowed execpt via kayak run. SDS Lumber Company, a subsidiary of Green Diamond Resource Company, restricted access in early 2023 since part of the steep unofficial trail down to the falls crosses land they have owned since purchasing it in November 2021.
Amazingly, the restriction which shut down access only affects an approximately 250 foot section of the trail near the canyon rim. Most of the trail crosses public land owned by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (Little White Salmon National Fish Hatchery), including the steep section which crosses a talus slope. The public section of the trail includes an elevation drop of over 800 feet down a 42.5% slope (confirmed by my Gaia GPS track years before the closure of access to the waterfall).
The length of the trail was only 0.8 miles round trip, but steep angled talus slope made it challenging, especially so when hauling a large Gitzo Mountaineer tripod with a 3-way pan and tilt plus a 40 lbs backpack of camera gear down with you. It's ironic that this steep section crossed public land owned by the Little White Salmon National Fish Hatchery, and it's the privately owned flatter section at the bottom above the river that effectively blocks public access. It's interesting that it's not the steep, publicly owned section of the trail which makes access to the waterfall game over. It's game over thanks to Green Diamond Resource Company and their 250 feet of land.
What Causes the Turquoise color at Spirit Falls and the Little White Salmon River?
The first time you see the turquoise color of the Little White Salmon River at Spirit Falls, your brain tries to make sense of it by reaching for something familiar. Most people land on glacial flour as the reason: the finely ground rock suspended in glacially fed rivers that produces the famous turquoise lakes of the Canadian Rockies. It's the wrong answer for the right reason: the color does come from suspended particles, just not glacial ones. The Little White Salmon has no glacier in its watershed. It never has.
What the river does have is time. Centuries of rainfall and snowmelt percolating through the limestone and basalt of the Monte Cristo Range in the Cascade Mountains within Gifford Pinchot National Forest, dissolving calcium carbonate crystal by crystal, building an invisible suspension of calcite particles that emerges through springs into the river. Once in the water, these particles do something elegant: they selectively absorb red and yellow wavelengths of light while scattering blue and green wavelengths back toward the surface. The longer the light travels through the water, the more pronounced the effect becomes. Surrounded by the dark basalt walls of the Columbia River Gorge, walls that absorb light rather than reflect it, the scattered blue-green light has nowhere to go but upward, intensifying until the water seems to generate its own light from within. That's not a filter. That's not enhancement. That's chemistry and physics producing something that looks frankly impossible.
That impossibly beautiful color is why I've found my way back here for so long. For my entire life of over 4 decades and counting, I've lived 90 minutes from Spirit Falls. I grew up hiking with my Dad to magical places like this in the Gorge. Now that he's gone, these are memories I look back on fondly. Even though he's gone, I can still close my eyes and feel Dad standing there with me, just like we would when I was young. Now that access has been restricted, I'm truly thankful this special place can still be seen through the wonders of photography. It may not be the same as visiting, but I can still gaze at these photos and take myself right back to this thin place which feels like it's in the forests of Heaven.
This image is available as a luxury museum-grade limited edition fine art print, part of James Mead's rare pre-closure documentation of Spirit Falls before public access was permanently restricted in 2023.
To view some of my other photos of Spirit Falls, please see Eye Candy, Jolly Rancher, Liquid Turquoise, Everything Imagined, Mystic Emerald and Escape Reality.
Technical Specifications
- Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark III
- Lens: Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM
- Settings: 24mm | f/11 | 0.5 Seconds | ISO 100
- Process: Single Exposure | In-Camera Long Exposure (The Mead Method) | Bespoke Multi-Layer Noise Management (Manual Masking to preserve fine detail and raw data integrity)
Historical Note - The End of Access to Spirit Falls
This photograph was captured in April 2021, prior to the November 17, 2021 sale of the land historically owned by the Broughton Lumber Company. SDS Lumber Co., the primary landowner at the time, was acquired by a consortium consisting of Wilkins, Kaiser & Olsen, Inc. (WKO) and Twin Creeks Timber LLC (a Green Diamond Resource Company venture). Following the transition, longstanding public access to Spirit Falls was officially terminated in January 2023 due to liability and land management concerns. This image represents a rare documentation of a landscape that is no longer accessible under current regulations.
Note on Provenance - The Beauty of Spirit Falls and the Little White Salmon River
Captured using the single exposure workflow of the "Mead Method," developed over 15 years of fine art landscape experience. This image preserves a genuine, single moment in time executed entirely in the field without the use of composites, sky swaps, or generative AI. Just a single moment in time, preserved.
Photo © copyright by James Mead.
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