Dana and his brothers headed out early one morning (January 6) in search of an adventure. Steen wanted to see some waterfalls and we wanted to experience something new in the forest. Our destination in the middle of nowhere was right in the middle of a large loop the the mountains and valleys of SW Washington. Our first stop was to marvel at a small herd of elk in a field. We soon came to our first good view of Mt. St. Helens.
The weather was good, with high cloud cover. The temperature was right bellow freezing; in other words it was cold out there. One thing nice about the time of year and the weather was total absence of people once we got into the forest.
Our first stop was Big Creek Falls. I really liked the strange ice city sitting in the shadow of the falls.
Something none of us had done before was to make our way down the canyon walls to the creek below. We were able to make our way to a nice viewing perch to admire the 113 ft. falls.
Our next goal was to find Cave Falls, a relatively unknown cascade partly due to the fact that this is the only sign to give a clue there may be something there, and partly due to the difficulty in actually seeing the falls.
The trail to Cave Falls from Big Creek Falls is a very nice one, winding through and impressive stand of old growth firs, cedars, and pine.
Plus we found this really crowded nurse log:
The 500 ft. tall waterfall is difficult to see for almost half of it runs underground through a lava tube, while the rest lies in this deep canyon obscured by trees. After some searching we found it. Here is our best view of Cave Falls.
We ate lunch at the McClellan viewpoint, a fantastic view of Mt. St. Helens.
Then it was time for our main hike. We were out there to find Rush Creek Falls. Rush Creek Falls is considered to be the number 7 on the list of the best waterfalls in the NW (out of almost 3500 known waterfalls in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho). The odd thing is there is no trail to the falls. To get to the waterfall you must use some very sketchy directions and go about 3 miles making your way down an old forest road (that when it was closed they ground it all up), through dense forest, and then down a 400 foot drop into the gorge it sits in. But It Is Worth It.
Here is a look at the old forest road. The ground is very uneven and we only could do this now because of the extra dry winter we have been having, so this wasn’t covered in several feet of snow.
I searched long and hard for the very little information on how to get to the falls. This hike was special to Steen and I since we had tried (and failed) to do this before nine years ago. The information then was even less than now. The biggest advantage I had this time was a GPS and the coordinates of the falls.
More old road and then we found the spot to head into the trees.
We soon discovered that someone had tied orange ribbons to trees that helped guide us through the trees and then down the steep slope. I was very grateful for those ribbons.
The sound of the falls also helped to guide us down the steep incline. Finding the creek, I guessed at where the best spot to head to was.
Rush Creek Falls are 200 ft. tall and about 70 ft. wide. From our spot the trees covered almost half of it. The power of the rushing water was amazing. It was definitely worth the hike. The spray from the waterfall also created a huge wall of ice on one side of the gorge.
I really like the look of the water under the main flow:
We took a nice long break and soaked in the view.
Making our way back out, we climbed over to closer perch.
By the time we made it out we were all dead tired. That is definitely one of the hardest (if not the hardest) hikes I have done.
We finished the loop drive with a stop at the odd rock in Stevenson, which my brothers had not seen. It was a tiring, yet rewarding day.
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