Upper Cloudland Falls

Upper Cloudland Falls is accessed from the Falling Waters Trail in Franconia Notch State Park. The trailhead is located directly along Interstate 93 about 8 miles north of Lincoln, or 2 miles south of the summit of Franconia Notch – there are separate parking areas for the northbound and southbound lanes, with a foot tunnel connecting the two.
The Falling Waters Trail climbs gently through the forest, crossing Walker Brook less than a quarter mile from the trailhead, and then Dry Brook around seven-tenths of a mile in, after which the grade starts to pick up. Cloudland Falls is encountered approximately 1.3 miles from the trailhead just after the pass scrambles through a large jumble of boulders. At the falls the trail climbs steeply up more large rocks, hugging the cliff opposite the falls in a semi-circle and running around to the top of the falls in a quickly ascending set of boulder-built stairs. The upper falls will be visible from the trail as it rounds the rocky outcrop at the top of Cloudland Falls, and climbs up the slabs of bedrock adjacent to the stream.While Cloudland Falls is usually regarded as the main waterfall attraction along the Falling Waters Trail in Franconia Notch, hikers who make the trek in that far should continue beyond for a short distance to find what we are informally referring to as Upper Cloudland Falls. The bottom of the upper falls is situated only 100 linear feet upstream from the top of Cloudland Falls, and features a cornucopia of different and interesting shapes and styles of falling water.
At the top of the falls, the main branch of Dry Brook tumbles about 15 feet over a nearly sheer cliff, splitting into three or four distinct channels by grooves in the rock. Below this the stream sheets down a long smooth waterslide for about 30 vertical feet, at which point it tumbles another 15-20 feet down a second steeper section of cascades. Adjacent to the bottom of the falls on the main fork of the stream, a tributary stream pours in from the right, plunging a nearly sheer 25 feet over a cliff and flowing right into Dry Brook as it accelerates towards the top of Cloudland Falls itself.
Dry Brook is not a large stream by any means, and that the volume at this waterfall is split between the two forks of the stream means that they will be all that much more reduced from what you may observe at Cloudland Falls just downstream. The main fork of the brook drains a basin covering about four-tenths of a square mile in area, while the tributary drains from an area of just one-fifth of a square mile. Needless to say, without snow melt or persistent rain to replenish the basins of these streams, the flow of the falls will be greatly reduced, and this should be expected in the late summer and early autumn months.