Table Mountain wildflower, and waterfall hike

April 3, 2026 

I’ve been back from my New Zealand/Australia trip for two days and I’m back on the trail. Today I am at table Mountain Ecological Reserve with the BAS Hiking Group. Seven people total today. 

The tufted poppy is the first flower we are coming across. This field definitely is not as colorful as last year as it has been drier.  I don’t remember seeing this one last year though.

A couple more pretty flowers are displaying themselves on the Mesa. This is all cattle grazing land, and we have the occasional cow along the trail as well. 

Standing at the top of the ravine, we are looking over where we should see a waterfall, there is no flow. 😢 From here trails drops steeply down into a ravine where we hope to find some flow from Ravine Falls. We will then climb up the opposite side of the valley on the way to Phantom Falls 

This is my third time here, and I have never noticed this section of bassault rock before. It is created from volcanic flow that quickly heats and  quickly cool’s forming hexagonal shaped columns.

 Ravine Falls has a little bit of water, not nearly as much as on the past hikes. Even with low flow, it is astonishing beautiful.

Two more beautiful flowers, the white globe, lily, and the twinning snake Lili 

The milk thistle is the other one I have not seen before, although I have seen closely related species. It has a very thorny stem with big pretty purple flowers. 

As we come up out of the green onto another Mesa, we have really nice views 

Phantom fall is flowing, but also at a much lower rate than I have previously seen 

This is the Caterpillar Scorpionweed, the white flowering section really does feel like a caterpillar. The silver Bush Lupine gets its name from the Silver tint on its leaves.

Lower Ravine falls is where we have stopped for lunch

We cross over another flat top Mesa that has really good view out into the valley

We drop back down to the edge of another various steep tall cliff, but have an amazing view of the next waterfall named Beamsome Falls. It sits in another steep and deep impressive canyon.

We finally come across one of the wild flower patches more to what I was expecting

The purple owls clover has a attractive, fuchsia colored flower, and just off to the other side is the river sneaking its way through the canyon both offering beautiful pictures 

We continued kind of mid slope a little above a river previously we had seen a waterfall in this section with this year‘s runoff it has not been visible 

I’ve found where the waterfall I was describing above should be.It is just a trickle with some wet rock still the changing in color with the wildflowers around it is pretty. 

There is a cool old Oak with some large circular Growth on the side of the trunk I was able to climb up on for neat picture 

We’ve made it back to the parking lot great day. The wind was only present at the very beginning. The rest was hidden by the canyons we are in. We get back up to the cars to the heavy wind, which feels kind of nice. We had 7.85 miles today so a beautiful distance and a beautiful hike