Falls Creek Falls – wanderingyuncks

Hurricane Creek – 07/22/2024

After our short hikes along Hat Point Road on Sunday (post) we had shuffled our planned hikes for the rest of the week. It was going to be hot for the first half of the week with the possibility of thunderstorms Monday afternoon and evening. In addition, I was dealing with a couple of nagging left leg issues which had me wanting to avoid overly strenuous hikes.

For Monday we decided to try Hurricane Creek. Sullivan lists three options for this featured hike in his “100 Hikes Eastern Oregon” guidebook. The options are a 0.6-mile hike to Falls Creek Falls, a 6.2-mile hike to Slick Rock gorge, and a 15.4-mile hike to Echo Lake. The latter gains 3400′ of elevation, most of which comes in the final three miles to the lake. We had originally hoped to make it to the lake, but that was obviously off the table now. Our plan now was to try and make it to the gorge, but we were prepared to turn around if needed.

We arrived at the Hurricane Creek Trailhead just before 6am to try and beat both the heat and any potential thunderstorms.

We set off on the Hurricane Creek Trail and after 0.1-miles detoured right on the Falls Creek Trail to see the falls.

Canadian milk-vetch

The Falls Creek Trail on the right.

Less than a quarter mile up this trail we arrived at a view of the falls.

Mock orange

After visiting the falls we returned to the Hurricane Creek Trail and continued on.

The Falls Creek crossing.

Twin Peaks from Falls Creek.

The trail followed Hurricane Creek fairly closely which provided plenty of views of it.

Geranium

Paintbrush

A paintbrush hiding in fleabane.

Robin

The trail crossed a rocky area caused by an avalanche.

Doe with one of her two fawns that were down at the creek at the avalanche area.

Mountain death-camas

The Hurwal Divide to the left of Sacajawea Peak.

Rosy pussytoes

Hurricane Divide (south)

At the 1.7-mile mark we came to Deadman Creek with a view of Deadman Falls.

Deadman Creek

Western tanager

Hurricane Creek

Slick Rock Creek flowing down from the right in the distance.

The trail made a couple of switchbacks to climb above Hurricane Rapids.

Just over the 3-mile mark we arrived at Slick Rock Creek.

The creek crossing.

We took a nice long break at this creek to enjoy the views and flowers.
Harebells and stonecrop

Paintbrush below the falls.

Arnica

Wallowa paintbrush, yellow columbine, milk-vetch, and northern sweetvetch.

Faint rainbow in the falls.

Butterfly on Rocky Mountain goldenrod.

Yellow fleabane

This may be common butterwort, but I’m not positive.

Yellow columbine

Spider hunting a moth. There was a brief scuffle, but the moth escaped unharmed.

Penstemon

After our rest we headed back. We detoured at the base of the switchbacks to check out Hurricane Rapids.

Sagebrush mariposa lily

It was a warm but pleasant hike back to the car.
Despite all the wildfires the views were pretty good as long as the Sun was at our backs.

Nuttal’s linathus

Wood nymph

There was haze to our backs though.

Rose along the trail.

A Sulphur butterfly.

A pale crescent on fleabane.

Our hike including the two detours came to 7.3-miles with approximately 900′ of elevation gain.

My leg held up pretty well and we were finished just after 11am so we had stayed ahead of the worst of the heat. The afternoon and evening thunderstorms mostly avoided the areas where our remaining hikes for the week were located. The only bad news was that another red flag warning had been issued to Wednesday when temperatures were forecast to hit the 90’s again and more afternoon thunderstorms were possible. We adjusted our schedule again to have our next shortest outing be that morning and moved the slightly longer hike to McCully Basin up to Tuesday. It was shaping up to be an interesting week, and one that we were going to need to be very flexible with. After cleaning up in our room in Enterprise we headed to dinner at Range Rider. Happy Trails!

Flickr: Hurricane Creek

Falls Creek Falls and Indian Racetrack

One week after spending a day hiking in California at the Lava Beds National Monument (post) we visited our neighbor to the north, Washington. On our itinerary for the day were a pair of hikes north of Carson, WA. We started with a visit to Falls Creek Falls.

We parked at the trailhead at the end of Forest Road 57 where only one other car occupied the large parking area at 7:15am. The dim morning light coupled with some low clouds made it hard to capture the fall colors with the camera but our eyes had no problems appreciating them as we set off on the trail.

We quickly passed a trail on the left which would be part of the loop we were planning on doing here and stayed straight toward the falls.

At the .4 mile mark we arrived at a short suspension bridge over Falls Creek.

Beyond the bridge the trail climbed gradually for a mile to a junction. Along the way there were several views of the creek.

At the junction we stayed right and continued to gradually climb for another .3 miles to three tiered Falls Creek Falls. The first views are of the upper and middle tiers through some trees.

The lower tier comes into view near the end of the trail at which point most of the upper tier is lost due to the angle.

We spent a few chilly minutes admiring the falls before heading back to the junction.

Here we veered uphill to the right climbing fairly steeply for about two tenths of a mile to the Falls Creek Trail.

Before continuing on the loop we turned right on the Falls Creek Trail to visit a viewpoint or two above the falls. After .6 miles on this fairly level trail we spotted a side trail heading out to the first viewpoint. We started to head out this spur but then noticed a tent set up there (we found the owners of the other car) so we continued another quarter mile to the second viewpoint.

The view from the top was just out over the valley, but a steep scramble trail led down to the top of the falls from here. We checked to see if the ground seemed muddy or slick, but it turned out to be in good shape so we made our way down to the creek just above the falls.

From the viewpoint we returned to the loop and continued down the Falls Creek Trail 1.7 miles to another bridge over Falls Creek which we hadn’t seen since the viewpoint. Despite the creek not being visible from the trail the scenery was not lacking due to the surrounding forest and fall colors.

At the far side of the bridge we turned left for a little over half a mile completing the loop and returning to our car, and a much fuller parking lot.

After the 6.3 mile hike here we were ready for the second hike of the day to the Indian Heaven Wilderness and Red Mountain. We drove back toward Carson and eventually (after missing the turn the first time) turned east on Warren Gap Road (Road 405) at a pointer for the Panther Creek Campground. We followed this road for a little under two miles to Forest Road 65 where we turned left for 8 miles, passing the parking area for Panther Creek Falls (post) along the way, to a junction with FR 60. We turned right here and followed this road for two miles to the Pacific Crest Trail and a small campground.

We followed the PCT north climbing gradually through the forest which looked quite different from the forest along Falls Creek just a few miles away.

A little over 1.75 miles from the trailhead we passed one of the small Sheep Lakes.

A quarter mile later we entered the Indian Heaven Wilderness.

Although there wasn’t as much fall color along this trail as there had been along the trails at Fall Creek there was some and there were also some interesting mushrooms to be seen.

This may named be Green Lake

As we hiked through a meadow we spotted the lookout tower on Red Mountain to the SW which was to be one of our stops on the hike.

We turned left off of the PCT 1.2 miles after entering the wilderness at a sign for Indian Racetrack.

This trail led a half mile through the forest to the large meadows at Indian Racetrack where up until 1928 tribes indeed raced horses.

We turned left in the middle of the meadows toward a trail sign for the Indian Racetrack Trail.

This trail climbed for .8 miles, steeply at times, to a road on the shoulder of Red Mountain. An opening just above a saddle along the way provided a nice view of Mt. Adams to the NE.

We followed the road uphill for .3 miles to the lookout gaining views of Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier along the way.

Lemei Rock and Mt. Adams

Near the lookout Mt. Hood and Mt. Jefferson could be seen to the south in Oregon.

We took a nice long break at the summit gazing at Washington’s trio of volcanoes and talking with a fellow hiker from Vancouver who had tried to reach the lookout earlier in the year but had been turned back by snow.
IMG_4555_stitch

Mt. St. Helens

Mt. Rainier

Mt. Adams

From the lookout we headed back down the road and followed it all the way back down to FR 60 a total of 3.4 miles from the tower.

We were a half mile from the Pacfic Crest Trail so we road walked, uphill, back to our car. In hindsight it might have been nicer to do the loop in reverse in order to start with the road walks and finish the hike with a gradual descent. Either way it was a great hike, but we had been expecting it to be a 7.5 mile loop based on our guidebook, but our GPS (and our legs) put it at 9.2 miles. Happy Trails!

Flickr: Falls Creek Falls and Indian Racetrack