The short and very popular hike to Sol Duc Falls attracts thousands of visitors every day. A longer but still moderate and less trafficked approach allows you to get a sense of the Sol Duc River valley with its magnificent old-growth trees, lush understory, burbling creeks, and even another waterfall. It’s recommended that you do this loop in the morning and then relax in the pools at the Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort after your hike.

Walk back from the resort parking to the left of a line of cabins. Where a gated service road leads up into the deep green forest, you’ll see the Lover’s Lane Trail, also signed for Mink Lake, leading up to the left. In about 50 yards, keep left at the junction with the Mink Lake Trail. The Lover’s Lane Trail continues through an old-growth forest of Douglas-fir, western hemlock, western red-cedar, and even a few large Sitka spruce. The trail itself has a rough, rooty, sometimes rocky tread as it passes above the hot spring pools at the resort. Other sections of Lover’s Lane can be very boggy early in the spring and early summer. A spur leads left to the alder-shaded Sol Duc River. You’ll pass through an alder bottomland and cross one footbridge before taking another bridge over Mink Lake Creek.