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I hiked to a cliché recently and the experience was more compelling than I expected it to be.

But then a 542-foot-high cliff isn’t apt to be boring, no matter how many calendars its visage has graced.

I’m writing here of Multnomah Falls.

It is Oregon’s highest waterfall and perennially among the places in the state that attract the most visitors.

Officially, Multnomah Falls is measured at 620 feet. That total includes the main plunge of 542 feet, the lower falls of 69 feet and a 9-foot drop between the two.

The falls is popular and iconic in part because of its location.

Multnomah Falls is just 20 miles or so east of Portland. And it’s right beside Interstate 84, so it’s much easier to get to than other Oregon scenic treasures such as Crater Lake or the Wallowas or Leslie Gulch.

This accessibility can be a curse as well as a blessing.

The parking lot at Multnomah Falls fills rapidly on nice days, and not infrequently the lot closes because there’s no space left.

I’ve driven past the falls dozens of times but I’ve taken the exit on just a few occasions.

This is in part due to the crowds.

I’m accustomed to hiking on trails in Northeastern Oregon where, with rare exceptions, encountering another person is so uncommon as to be noteworthy — akin to seeing a rarely glimpsed animal such as a bear.

I generally avoid Multnomah Falls because I figure I’d end up dodging hordes of cavorting teenagers and the occasional small but ill-tempered dog, the latter meetings inevitably happening at a narrow section of trail.

But I also have dismissed the falls as hardly worthy of my time.

It is, after all, just a waterfall, albeit a lengthy example by local standards.

That’s what I meant by Multnomah Falls being a cliché. Many serious nature photographers eschew waterfalls as subjects simply because they are so common. How many doctor’s offices or motel rooms have you been in that had at least one waterfall scene, whether a photograph or a painting? The setting is so ubiquitous you no longer notice it, the visible equivalent to the background hum of traffic that any city dweller quickly adjusts to.

Like all types of discrimination, my disdain for Multnomah Falls was misguided, the product of lazy thinking and the sloppy assumptions it yields.

I had occasion to not only stop at the falls, but to hike the trail to the top, while returning from the state tennis tournament with my wife, Lisa, and our daughter, Olivia.

We had stayed overnight in Troutdale, just a dozen or so miles away, and we got to the parking lot early enough — about 7:30 a.m. — that we almost had our pick of spaces although it was a sunny Sunday.

We walked the paved trail to the Benson Bridge, the stone structure that spans Multnomah Creek between the upper and lower falls. As I stood on the bridge and felt the chilly spray from the upper falls on my cheeks, I gained a fresh appreciation for the place. Waterfalls might be commonplace, but then so are mountains (at least in the jumbled topography of Oregon). Yet outstanding examples of either can hardly fail to impress. Mount Hood is the volcanic equivalent to Multnomah Falls, both being the subject of countless photographs, but the view of the mountain from, say, Timberline Lodge inspires a certain awe no matter how often you see it.

We continued up the steep, but paved, trail, which makes 11 switchbacks and gains about 800 feet of elevation in a little more than a mile.

Besides the occasional glimpse of the falls, there is an expansive view of the great Columbia River.

We had the obligatory stomach-fluttering look over the railing of the observation platform at the top of the falls. There is something uniquely compelling, and frightening, about the short reach of a stream just before it plunges into the abyss. I can’t help but wonder what it would feel like to be standing on a slippery rock, knowing that one slip would be my last.

Rather than hike straight back to the parking lot we walked up the Larch Mountain trail for half a mile or so. The trail followed Multnomah Creek upstream. It’s a fetching stream, one that would be a major waterway in arid Eastern Oregon but is merely one of many that have carved channels in the immense flows of basalt that make up the Columbia River Gorge.

That basalt, interestingly, is not local.

Rather than erupting from the volcanoes that comprise the Cascade Mountains, the basalts in the Gorge poured from vents in Northeastern Oregon and flowed west, a molten river. The remnants of those vents remain as dikes and sills — swathes of brown stone conspicuous as they slice through the white limestone and granitic rocks of the Wallowas.

The trail was considerably more crowded on the way down than it had been less than an hour earlier.

But it wasn’t unpleasant. There were teenagers, and a few dogs, but they all behaved themselves.

It struck me that the factors which have convinced me to avoid Multnomah Falls — the teeming masses, the wide, blacktopped trail that is a freeway compared with the typical mountain path, the familiar vista of plunging water — ought to be celebrated rather than demeaned.

I’m glad there are places of great natural beauty that attract people who in most cases have no interest in exploring untrammeled wilderness but merely want to see a big waterfall and don’t mind hiking in flipflops to get there.

I doubt I’ll ever make Multnomah Falls a regular stop. But I think I’ll be more inclined to pull off the freeway, to take advantage of what is in effect a rest area that happens to have a 620-foot waterfall, rather than a copse of trees or a field of grass, as its main attraction.