The siren wail of my husky-mix sent me into a panic. I hadn’t immediately unbuckled her seatbelt after opening the car door and she had jumped out, one furry outstretched limb becoming lodged in the wheel well of my car.

My husband and dad rushed to her aid. When they realized they couldn’t safely pull her out, my husband unbuckled her seatbelt from inside the car, allowing her to jump onto the pavement.

We were in the trailhead parking lot of the Waterfalls Loop Trail at the headwaters of the McKenzie River, a trail offering jaw-dropping views of Sahalie and Koosah Falls.

Fortunately, Juno wasn’t injured. But the sound of her shrieking would reverberate in my head throughout the rest of the hike.

Jaw-dropping waterfalls

In his guidebook “100 Hikes: Central Oregon Cascades,” author William L. Sullivan calls this hike a quick way to impress out-of-state family and friends. We certainly impressed my parents, who were visiting Bend from Colorado.

We could hear the roar of Koosah Falls from the parking lot, as it was only about 300 feet away. The gushing 120-foot waterfall was an impressive start to a relatively easy 3-mile loop hike with 400 feet of elevation gain.

About a half mile down the trail is the equally impressive 90-foot Koosah Falls. The names of each have origins in the Native American Chinook tribe and both roughly translate to English as “sky” or “heaven” from the Chinook Jargon language.

Both cascades instill a sense of inexplicable wonder that makes this hike my favorite in Central Oregon. Each waterfall tumbles over basalt flows formed 3,000 years ago, according to the trailhead signage.

The trail offered ample viewpoints of the waterfalls throughout the hike, where we spotted rainbows gleaming in the mist.

Wildflower wonders

My mom and I regularly stopped to appreciate and capture photographs of the wildflowers in bloom along the trail. We saw western trillium blooming throughout the hike; some of the three-petaled flowers were white, while others had deep purple hues.

Also in bloom last weekend were a few yellow goosefoot violets, light purple

bleeding hearts and Oregon grape. Near the Carmen Reservoir, where a bridge allows hikers to cross the river, we saw small white flowers of wild strawberries.

We took our time soaking in the beauty, from the waterfalls to the wildflowers to the old-growth forest of moss-covered Douglas fir and ponderosa pine trees. According to the tracking app on my iPhone, it took over 2 and a half hours to log a total of 3.4 miles.

Through almost the entirety of the journey, we were rewarded with the beauty of the McKenzie River, with its magnificent blue shade peeking on both sides of the river.

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More along the McKenzie River

A bench I had sat on near Koosah Falls in 2023 had since been removed, so we drove across the McKenzie Highway and to enjoy lunch on the picnic tables next to Clear Lake, where we watched others go by on stand-up paddle boards and row boats, which are available for rent at Clear Lake Resort.

The gorgeous blue lake inspired me to return to hike the Clear Lake Trail. A $9 day permit is required at this trailhead and a notice warned that the bridge on the north end of the trail is closed, but the entire 4.8-mile loop hike may still be accessed with a small river crossing.

It’s also possible to hike from Clear Lake to the Waterfalls Loop Trail, both part of the larger 26-mile-long McKenzie River Trail.

The McKenzie River disappears at Carmen Reservoir, then resurfaces several miles downstream at Tamolitch Falls (also commonly known as Blue Pool), another beautiful 2-mile day hike.