Southern NH- Falls Brook Falls

With not much to do on one of the nicest days in the past two weeks, we decided to try to find Falls Brook Falls in Troy, NH. I had seen an ancient-looking picture on the town of Troy's historical society, and it looked to be a decent enough drop of maybe 30 feet. With screenshots of the trail layout around the waterfall, we set out to go find them. We drove down the dirt portion of Richmond Road until we found a pulloff to park at. Continuing down the road, we passed an intersection, and soon came to some machinery. I looked at Google Maps (I wasn't expecting to still have service), and saw that there should be a trail off on the right to follow. I saw a faint path, and we took that. It was easy enough to follow at first, but soon we came to a mess of a brook crossing. A relatively small tributary of Falls Brook had flooded the entire road for about 50 feet. We found a somewhat dry way around it, but by the time we reached the other side, we were unable to find the trail. Peering over some trees from the adjacent clear cut, we decided it would at least be easier to walk in there. A bit later, we looked over more trees and saw a flat, wide road. Figures. Continuing down this road, we came to a large open space that looked like it had been camped on. The maps showed a trail leaving from around here but we were unable to find any trace of it. Bushwhacking down along the brook was hell. At times there were tricky crossings and thick hemlock groves. After maybe half an hour, we were sick of it and tried to cut back to the left to find the trail. After cutting through the thickest hemlock grove yet, we stumbled across a beer can. We had to be close to the trail now. In another couple minutes, we had successfully reached the trail. From here, we could see that the brook began to drop down a large ravine in an open forest, so we actually didn't even follow the trail. Cutting down to the brook, we saw a large zigzag of cascades, maybe 5-10 feet in height total. Pretty cool, but definitely not what I saw in the picture.

The upper cascades

We continued, passing two five foot drops. These were also rather nice, but still definitely not what we were looking for.

One of the larger cascades

 At the bottom of a following seven foot drop, we could see green leaves if we looked out horizontally, signifying a larger drop. We scrambled down the side of a drop, quickly reaching the bottom. It was around 40 feet tall, and consisted of a couple cascades, a large rectangular plunge, and a wide block cascade. At this point I was impressed with our find, but it was still not what was in the picture.

At this point, these were the biggest falls we had seen

Another 50 feet from the last drop, we stood and looked down the largest drop in the series. It had to be at least 50, if not 60 feet tall, and was all somewhat a continuous drop. By carefully picking my way to the bottom, I was able to see that this was the waterfall from the picture. The picture I had seen had definitely not done it any justice, as it was twice as tall as expected. While I have not been to every waterfall in southern New Hampshire, I'm willing to bet that this one of, if not the tallest drop,  both continuous and total, in the region.

The absolutely massive final drop

On our way back, we made it back to the trail. We soon started the uphill slog back to the car. Ugh. After a while, we came across caution tape that had been placed on trees along with private property signs. We hadn't seen any going in, and if we had we likely would've either found a way around it or turned around. If a reader of this post decides to go here, please do your best to not trespass.