Twist Falls

Twist Falls is a surprisingly significant waterfall found along the East Fork Miller River a short distance upstream of where it flows into Lake Dorothy in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. The falls drop a total of 104 feet down a narrow gorge in three distinct steps, with drops of 54, 24, and 26 feet respectively. Because of how the river falls into the narrow canyon, not all of the falls can be clearly seen from the most direct viewpoint - whether there are more revealing views from other locations we were not able to find out on our initial survey (it was raining fairly heavily and extensive bushwhacking was not exactly something we wanted to undertake). The East Fork of the Miller at this point in its length is considerably more limited in its flow by the drainage basin. The area feeding the river upstream of the falls is about 3 square miles in size, harbors one moderate size lake, and encompasses an area entirely at or above 3300 feet above sea level, so though the basin isn't terribly large the mountainous terrain will ensure that the winter snowpack will retain well and contribute an even flow to the river well into the summer. By the end of August however, expect the volume of water to drop off significantly - perhaps by as much as 80 percent.We stumbled across a photograph of this waterfall in the US Library of Congress' online archives. The falls were photographed by F.W. Cleator in 1928 and captioned with the name Twist Falls, possibly having been discovered at the same time. Given that this is the only previous documentation we've seen of this waterfall, we have little reason to doubt this was when it was discovered. The name of the falls we speculate could refer to one of two characteristics; either the fact that the falls do somewhat "twist" down the narrow canyon as they skip from tier to tier, or it could be a reference to the twisting nature of the river as it flows down the gorge, since it does make several sharp bends back and forth (both above and below the falls).