The study of the topography of any area is always interest and when you add a trail and a waterfall to the mix, you get a good understanding of the terrain. Sometimes it also will help you find a waterfall and, most times, recognizing features will be a comfort in knowing where you are.
Please refer to the topo map in the slide show. For detailed articles on the two waterfalls, click on the links below.
Yellow Branch Falls Trail. Leaving the parking lot, you'll head into the first of four elements of the trail where you'll be alongside a stream that sits down in a "mini-gorge" on your left. Second, you'll walk through a very pleasant open, forested, valley floor for almost a half mile. Once this ends, you cross the stream and come around on the third element of the trail, the outside of a ridge that gives good views. Staying up on the ridge, you swing around the "nose" of the ridge before dropping steeply into the fourth element, the gorge containing Yellow Branch Falls.
Lohr's Falls Trail. This trail leaves Yellow Branch Falls Trail right where its second element ends. There is no formal trail to Lohr's. A path does exist part way but much is a bushwhack. The "way" to the falls actually has five sections. The first is very short, just about fifty yards uphill to a cairn marking where the path drops down into the second section, a valley floor. At the second stream, the path disappears and you cross the stream to the third section, the ridge. Climbing the ridge and descending down the other side, you encounter a third stream, the one coming off Lohr's Falls. Following upstream and crossing over to the fourth section, the loop, you cut across the top of the loop to where the stream exits the gorge in a small cascade. This gorge is element number five and takes you to the waterfall.
Give it a try, study some terrain, get familiar with topographical maps. You'll find it greatly enhances the hiking experience.
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