[Sore Feet]

*** Rather than doubling up, go here for pics: http://www.waterfallsnorthwest.com/updates.php All bolded links added on March 29th have pictures. *** Three days, overcast skies, possible rain. Music to my ears. I'll spare the backstory, because it is pointless and boring. Left friday morning around 9am, and headed to Oregon for some weekend waterfalling fun. First destination was Silver Falls State Park. It had been 3 years since I was last there, and almost 10 years since I'd seen more than two of the falls in the park, so I figured I was due. Started out at Upper North Falls, encountered some croudage, but took my pictures without interuption. Next, on the opposite side of the road, was North Falls - a 136 foot monster, for those of you not familiar - that has a 75 foot deep recess behind the falls that the trail traverses. Probably the deepest recess behind a waterfall in the northwest. Next, it was back in the car, and down to South Falls for a quick loop around the falls, nothing special. Then I headed back to Winter Falls, and pounded out the remaining 6 of the 9 falls along the Trail of 10 Falls that I could get to (Lower South Falls is currently inaccessible due to trail closures). North Silver Creek was running much lower than I'd hoped, and I didn't get the great curtain effect I really wanted to get at Middle North Falls, but Lower North Falls turned out to be just right. Daylight ran out at this point, so I headed for my motel in Salem. Poked around in a mall for dinner, and just happened to stumble across the 4th edition of the great book A Waterfall Lover's Guide to the Pacific Northwest - so naturally I had to pick it up. The author and I had talked several times, and I knew he had acknowledged my website in the book, but he mentions me by name many more times than I expected. I love free publicity. Anyway, Day Two. Expecting a call on my cell from Loofus, I waited around until aboit 9am to head out. Not getting any calls (as it turns out because my phone number was disconnected ), I headed out alone. Plan for Saturday was a pillage of the North Santiam River drainage. First stop was a small, boring little fall at Niagara County Park. After that, I headed up to the French Creek area near Detroit Lake. This was one of the areas I came for. There are five mapped falls in this drainage, and I found three of them. Another was quite obscured by brush, and one was running too low to make it worth the climb. The big surprises of this area were 1 - a 150 foot plunging waterfall near the headwall of French Creek, quite a bit more impressive than I imagined, and 2 - a 270 foot monster on the opposite side of the drainage, which literally sprays onto an old road. Feeling satisfied in this drainage, I headed onward, but stoped back near the highway when I spotted a cool looking pothole gorge on French Creek which normally lies under about 20 feet of Detroit Lake. There were several salamanders wandering about here too. Onward, next was a short stop at Whispering Falls campground - again nothing special, then on to the big boys of the day, Gooch, Sahalie and Koosah Falls. All of which were raucus as usual. Between Gooch and the falls on the McKenzie River, however, I headed up the Quartzville Byway in search of a mystery waterfall I found on geocaching.com. After breifly worrying about lingering snow at the 3800 foot level (this year? yeah, right), I found the falls...to be almost dry. But much to my surprise, adjacent to the falls, on the main creek, was one of the coolest slot canyons I've ever seen. Not of the Antelope Canyon sort, but of the Oneonta Gorge, only more rugged. I'm fairly certain there's a big falls at it's head too, but the creek was running just a tad too high to explore too far in. Gives me a good excuse to come back in the summer. So, then, the falls on the McKenzie - two of the most popular in Oregon - then on to the South Santiam Draiange, only by this time, I'd used up most of my daylight, so I chugged and switched from "quality" mode to "quantity" mode and ditched some of the other good ones around that would have taken my time up, and headed for McDowell Creek Falls Park near Sweet Home. The park harbors four modest waterfalls within about 3/4 of a mile of one another. They were all very nice, except for the fact that a massive, ugly clear cut butts right up against the edge of Royal Terrace Falls - the biggest and best of the park. Ran out of light, and headed back to the motel to watch Gladiator. Day three, again, still no Loofus, so I headed out early. This time, to the Shellburg Falls area, just south of Silver Falls State Park. I saved this area for last to make sure the small streams would benefit from the overnight rain. And they did. There's seven falls in this area, three of which are accessed from one point, and four another. I started with the three. Shellburg, Lower Shellburg and Stasel Falls - all accessed from a road-walk of about a mile and a half. The road passes a modest swampy area where a veritable crescendo of frogs drown out all other noises (like loud enough that you couldn't hear an airplane fly overhead). The first two are fairly developed, with trails or roads leading to good views - Shellburg Falls being yet another of the area's falls to have a walk-behind recess. Stasel Falls was the butt-kicker of the day. An old road provides access to the top of the 125 foot falls, but views are very limited from there, so, at the advice of a local waterfall hunter, I headed back down the road, then scrambled - slid really - down the canyon wall, and trapsed up the valley to the falls. This was actually a fairly easy bushwhack. The ground cover was largely open, with ferns and Oregon grape all about, but travel was pretty easy, and the view of the falls from the bottom was well worth it. Perhaps the coolest feature of Stasel Falls is the 100 foot free-standing basalt pillar immediately next to the falls. When Stout Creek is running at it's peak flow, park of the creek splits off below the first drop of the falls, flows around the pillar and forms a second segment. After climbing back up the canyon, I was firmly exhausted, and took the 1 1/2 mile walk back to the car in leasure. The series of falls, Ayers Creek, Horseshoe and Stout Creek Falls, are in the same drainage, but are accessed from a different road. I found the starting point quite easily, and headed off to the first. Much to my pleasure, a faint, but obvious trail blazed down to the base of Horseshoe Falls - so named because of it's horseshoe shaped recess (the recess behind the waterfall is sort of a theme in this area of the state). Next was Ayers Creek Falls, just a short walk away. A different waterfall hunter friend of mine in the area had found it several weeks prior, and gave me sketchy directions, but I walked too far up the road, and ended up heading into the woods above the falls. I didn't know this, and soon found myself working my way towards the sound of a waterfall. Traversing down and laterally through much nastier stuff than at Stasel Falls - lots of rotting wood and the like - I literally ran into the creek at the top of a surprise Upper Falls. The falls dropped into the canyon at the same angle of which I was approaching, so I had to hop the small creek, and circumnavigate the whole canyon to get a clear view. After some quick pics, I headed back to the road, walked down a little further, and plunged back in the woods and very quickly found the main falls. Now, having found a bonus waterfall (always nice), having done my fair share of bushwhacking for the day, and seeing as it was starting to rain rather hard, I skipped out on the final waterfall in the drainage, Stout Creek Falls, and I headed up to Elkhorn Valley to hit a few easier-to-get-to waterfalls. Salmon Falls is right along the Little North Santiam River along the way to the Henline Falls trailhead. This was a nice walk of about a mile , half along an old road, and half through a forest of huge trees. Henline Falls itself is one of the best in the area, dropping 89 feet over a wide ledge. At the base of the falls is the abandoned Silver King Mine, which can be explored (I didn't go too far in, but I did snap a picture). The last waterfall of the day was another 5 miles up the valley, but right along the road. After this, I stopped at a day use site called Three Pools, which turned out to be one of the coolest looking sections of river I've ever seen. The Little North Fork cascades through a gorge of free standing pillars, then sloshes into a calm, almost neon green pool, layered with big bright yellow slabs of rock. I spent a good half out here taking pictures. And now that the rain was falling harder, and the light was fading, I called it a day, and headed home. Total tallies: Waterfalls photographed - 36, Photographs taken - 130, Scratches recieved - 7, Dirty pairs of socks - 4. Stay tuned for The Great Oregon Waterfall Pillage 2005, Vol.2 coming in June. Pictures and links will be posted, but it'll take me a few days to sort all my pictures out.

[Chief Paulina]

Thanks for the great report on waterfalls in my backyard. Between you and loofus, I will be quite busy chasing falls from your 'guidebooks'

[loofus]

When I couldn't get you on the ol' cellularized phone, I wasn't sure if you made it across the border or not, and I wasn't sure where to find you. I was up and ready to leave around 5:00am but waited until around 6:00 to call. I was in pretty sad shape from the NFMF pillage, but I still pondered whether or not I wanted to drive up to try finding you. I thought better of it considering the condition of my ankle, my knee, and the amount of sleep I didn't get Friday night. I went back to bed and slept 'til noon. Sounds like your pillage was also a success. It seems like you might have got more rain than we did. We'll have to work out this communication thing so we don't end up with the same blunder come June. Between the two of us, no waterfall is safe!

[Sore Feet]

Yeah, I assumed that since I didn't hear from you, you probably got your butt kicked or something. I think we'll just meet at your place next time. Fortunately, thanks to Al Gore, you don't have to miss out on everything. It'll probably take a me a week to sort all my picture out (took an hour just to download them all), but I nailed every one of them.

[frankm3]

Cool trip Bryan!!! Before I forget- congrats on the website publicity in the waterfall book!!! That's got to be really cool to get some recognition for your hard work on the website!! I thought this might be a 'bad year' for waterfall photography given the low snow levels. As a photographer, are you finding this true in any fashion thus far? Awesome TR!!! Frank

[Sore Feet]

Water levels aren't too bad right now, but as Loofus attested to last week, just about everything in Oregon is running way below normal for this time of year. The waterfalls in Silver Falls State Park were flowing like you'd usually expect in May or June, there was virtually no snow in the higher elevations (below 4000' at least), and all of the more seasonal waterfalls in the headwalls of various creeks were flowing at May levels. The only streams that were behaving somewhat normally were Marion Creek and the McKenzie River - but again, at levels I'd expect to see in the summer. I'm not convinced it'll be a drought summer just yet, but if it is, yeah, it'll be a really bad year for waterfalls. I'm already planning on hiking back up to Otter Falls about two months earlier than I normally would.

[Tom]

Me thinks you may already be too late for Otter.

[loofus]

Right now things are pretty normal at higher elevations in Oregon. I was stunned this weekend to see stream levels so high. On the other hand, this is the earliest I've ever accessed this area. The road to the Erma Bell Lakes TH is open and snow free. This usually doesn't happen until mid to late May. It has been open since the end of February. I don't think we'll see a huge difference at the upper elevations until mid-summer, but the low elevation streams are already beginning to dry up. We will probably just be a couple months ahead of schedule unless we get a TON of rain very soon. It has been raining for several days now, so that is a good sign. I hope it keeps up for at least another month.

[loofus]

[Sore Feet]

Yeah, he gives me ink on several occassions. Looking over it more and more, there really isn't any information in it I didn't know (and he has MANY errors in many different forms - I get especially nit picky when it's stuff I know he should know), but being the perpetual obsessive waterfall hound I am, I will buy up any book on the subject I can find. Tom, you may be right, but one can hope. All I can say is thank god there are glaciers around here.

[Chief Paulina]

Sorefeet, I was browsing your webpage the other day. Pretty cool stuff. I'll go back for more later. Being from Oregon, I checked out your top 20 of Oregon. I've seen most of them and agree they are among the very best Oregon has to offer. I was quite surprised, however, that your list did not include Tokatee Falls. In fact, I was expecting it to be at the top of the list. If all of those falls are rated higher than Tokatee, I'd best get back out there and take some pics. Should be a good spring and summer.

1Tokatee Falls

[loofus]

[Sore Feet]

No doubt. I'm sure the same could be said for Idaho and BC too. If only I could do this for a living. I was actually rather surprised with the amount of "new" stuff Plumb covered in Oregon, but again, it's not new to me. Of the 22 I noticed being new to this edition, I think I've seen at least half in person, and pictures of all but maybe 3 of the rest. Virtually all the "new" stuff in Washington I've seen. I dunno if he's gonna do a 5th edition or not, but certainly by the time he does, I'll have at least one book out to dethrone him properly.

[loofus]

[Sore Feet]