I really love nature and going on adventures, and luckily so does my boyfriend! While we were both off this week for spring break, we decided to take advantage of some of the awesome places around us.
About two hours away from us is Glen Onoko Falls, which is part of Lehigh Gorge State Park. It is located up in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, an area I am actually quite familiar with because I have family up there.
Glen Onoko is really beautiful, but also very dangerous because of the type of hiking some of the trails involve. Some trails, like the one we took, are very steep and require a lot of caution. We needed to be extra careful since there was snow on the ground, and the hike is slippery on a good day to begin with. The snow was a problem more because it made it difficult to see what you were stepping onto, and the ground was wet and muddy.
We mostly adhered to the orange trail, which is the more technical (aka difficult) trail. If you take it all the way up, you will pass three falls that essentially get bigger as you go.
Here is at waterfall #1.
Waterfall #2.
Waterfall #3.
You can keep going to pass the third waterfall, though it does get much steeper and you have to pick your steps carefully. When you get up, there is a rope that blocks off the top of the waterfall since it is really slippery and looks easy to fall down, but you can still see the pretty view of the mountains!
Getting down was much harder and scarier, in my opinion, since it is very vertical and it feels like you are rock climbing down at some points. Thankfully, my boyfriend is much more experienced in hiking than I am and he was able to help me down the parts I couldn’t manage on my own. After you get all the way back down to the base of the trail, you can walk along a little wooden road and get to a cave.
Overall, it was really an amazing trip with some beautiful views! If you don’t want such a steep hike, there are some other trails and things to see too :) I definitely plan to go back in the summer when it is warm!