Location: Salisbury, VT Stream : Sucker Brook Finding : Fairly easy Access : Easy, but requires some walking and climbing.
The Falls of Lana are on United States Forest Service land and the trail to the falls is marked by USFS signs. The trailhead is along route 53 on the East side of Lake Dunmore.
My friend, John, and I parked in a small parking area and walked up the obvious trail to a place where we could get a good view of the falls. The trail ran along side of a large pipe that seemed to come from Silver Lake.
The falls themselves were quite interesting although we were not able to get very close to them due to the steep ravine that separated the trail from the falls. The falls primarly consisted of a steep, almost staircase formation of rock over which the stream tumbled. On either side of the staircase there was a wall of rock; the whole thing really gave me the impression of a stairwell. At the bottom of the staircase there was a pool and from that pool another, more typical looking waterfall, cascaded.
I have since learned that there was a trail going around to the top of the staircase. John and I didn't know that when we visited these falls, and we didn't explore around too much. I'll have to return some time for a better look.
Here is a picture [137K] of the falls as seen from the far side of the ravine. This picture was taken from above and doesn't really show the falls very well. They are much nicer looking than this picture suggests.
Today my friend Kim and I visited the Falls of Lana under overcast skies. Kim is a native of Middlebury and knows the area well. A little farther north on route 53 than the place where John and I had stopped before there is a camping area. We parked there and then followed a blue blazed trail that climbed steeply uphill from the back of the campground.
The trail stayed within earshot of the stream but didn't follow it closely. However, it soon climbed up to the very head of the stairstep falls I described last year. Kim and I sat on the rocks next to the water and the view was great. The stairstep flowed out of a large pool surrounded by sheer clifts ten to twenty feet high. The stream poured over a notch in one wall in a beautiful falls. Above that falls there was another, higher one that was just as lovely. Both of these upper falls were completely invisible from where John and I had been last year, yet in many ways they were the most dramatic part of the whole falls complex.
Kim and I scrambled over steep, rocky faces to the top of the upper falls. There was an excellent view from there down the stream and out over the valley to Lake Dunmore. The rock in the area was shaped into dramatic cuts and ridges. The stream flowed across and over these ridges to form the falls (Picture [137 KBytes]). The geology of the spot must be quite interesting.
We then followed the stream up to a trail bridge a few hundred yards or so upstream from the falls. From there we followed the road to Silver Lake back to the pipe John and I had explored last year. We looped back down the pipe and up route 53 to our car.
The area deserves more exploration. I got a couple of pictures, but I think there are many more excellent shots to be had. On my next visit I might climb down to the pool from the road on the other side or perhaps hike up the stream from the bottom to see if I can get a really good picture of the stairstep part of the falls.
Return to the list of waterfalls.
