linton lake – wanderingyuncks

**Note the 2017 Separation Fire burned a portion of this hike.**

In 2015 we did an off trail exploration of Linton Creek from Linton Meadows down toward Linton Lake. That day we cliffed out on the south side of the creek somewhere along Linton Falls. The Northwest Waterfall Survey gives Linton Falls a total height of 615′ consisting of 7 drops. We were unable to reach the final drop which is the tallest and most impressive so we vowed to return someday and try coming up from Linton Lake on the north side of the creek.

That day had finally come. We started at the Linton Lake Trailhead which is located 11 miles east of Highway 126 along Highway 242 near the Alder Springs Campground.

Then we crossed the highway and set off on the Linton Lake Trail which quickly entered the Three Sisters Wilderness.
Entering the Three Sisters Wilderness on the Linton Lake Trail

Linton Lake is just under 1.5 miles from the trailhead. The trail spends that time passing through the forest before crossing a lava flow and then descending via a series of switchbacks to the lake.
Linton Lake Trail

Linton Lake Trail

The trail stays above the lake at first and on this morning there was enough fog to keep us from getting any kind of a decent look. The trail descended to Obsidian Creek after a half mile which marked the end of the official trail.

We crossed the creek and continued on use trails around the lake. We were now able to get down to the shore even though we still couldn’t really see anything.
Linton Lake

Since the use trails are not maintained there was a bit of blowdown to navigate but nothing too daunting.
Downed trees along Linton Lake

Linton Lake Trail

We reached Linton Creek just over a half mile from Obsidian Creek.

At the creek we headed uphill continuing to follow fairly obvious use trails as we climbed along the creek.
Linton Creek

The climb was fairly steep in places but after approximately .4 miles we arrived at a viewpoint of 85′ Lower Linton Falls.

Lower Linton Falls

The use trails became increasingly faint as we climbed away from Lower Linton Falls. We stopped at the top of the falls to get a look down before continuing on.
Top of Lower Linton Falls

Lower Linton Falls

Not only did the use paths get fainter but the terrain continued to steepen as we climbed. Four tenths of a mile from the viewpoint of Lower Linton Falls we got our first glimpse of the final drop of Linton Falls.
The lowest portion of Upper Linton Falls

This portion of Linton Falls did not disappoint. The only issue with it was the massive amount of spray from the falls made it nearly impossible to keep the camera lens dry.
Upper Linton Falls

Upper Linton Falls

After admiring the view we continued uphill. Our goal was to get far enough up the creek to at least be across from where we’d cliffed out in 2015 on the opposite side. To continue we knew from a 2012 trip report by Wild Umpqua that things were going to get even steeper as we continued. We veered away from the creek and followed an old creek bed uphill.
Route to the top of Upper Linton Falls

We knew we were on the right course when we spotted a small cave that was mentioned in that report.
Small cave near Upper Linton Falls

Route up Upper Linton Falls

We cut back over to the creek when the terrain made that a more attractive option than trying to continue up the dry creek bed. As luck would have it that happened to be almost directly across from our GPS track from 2015 and just above the top of a large drop of Linton Falls.
Upper Linton Falls

I was a little confused by the drop we were above because it didn’t look like what I would have expected from anything we’d seen from below. I think the answer is that this was actually the top of a drop that only the very bottom was visible of from below coming from the left around a bend. I was able to follow the ridge down a bit to get a somewhat limited look at the side of this drop.
Upper Linton Falls

Looking up the creek from this drop revealed more of Linton Falls.
Linton Creek above Upper Linton Falls

We walked up along the creek a very short distance where we saw a very familiar looking drop with a log in the middle of the creek.
More of the series of cascades that make up Upper Linton Falls

Upper Linton Falls

We’d seen the same log from the other side in 2015.
Another tier of Upper Linton Falls

We now felt like we had seen most of Linton Falls between the two visits. As far as we can guess it goes something like this.
One of the drops that make up Linton Falls

Upper portion of Upper Linton Falls

More drops of Linton Falls

More of the series of cascades that make up Upper Linton Falls

Upper Linton Falls above its final drop

Upper Linton Falls

This is a complicated fall and it’s quite possible that there is something between the final drops and the big drop we were above that we were never able to see. It’s also difficult to say for certain where the actual start of Linton Falls is, but that is part of what makes this such a spectacular waterfall.

As we began our descent the Sun finally started to make an appearance.
Sun finally penetrating the fog

Coming down was harder than going up but we managed to make the descent without incident stopping back by the viewpoints below Linton Falls and above Lower Linton Falls to see how the emerging Sun had changed the views.
Upper Linton Falls

Rainbow over Linton Creek below Lower Linton Falls

Linton Lake was fog free when we made it back.

As we made our way around the lake it was possible to see some of Linton Falls on the hillside. The view didn’t do much to clear up the makeup of the falls though.
Linton Lake with part of Linton Falls visible up on the hillside beyond

This was actually our third time encountering Linton Creek, our first was in 2014 on a backpacking trip around the South Sister. which has cemented itself as our favorite creek. From it’s beginnings at Linton Springs and Linton Meadows it puts on one amazing and scenic show on it’s way to Linton Lake.

South Sister and Linton Creek

With nearly all of the creek being off trail it makes for a challenging goal but the rewards are great. Happy Trails!

Flickr: Linton Falls from Linton Lake

**Note the 2017 Separation and 2024 Linton Creek Fires burned portions of this hike.**

The second day of our four day backpacking trip was set to be an adventure. Our plan was to spend the day “off-trail” exploring Linton Creek which is home to several rarely visited waterfalls. We had camped at Eileen Lake on the NE side of The Husband and originally planned on hiking down the official trail to Linton Creek where we had eaten our dinner the night before, but during our evening exploration of the area behind our campsite we realized we should be able to follow a dry creek bed we’d seen and reach Linton Creek by a more direct route. It would also allow us to avoid another trip through all the frogs along Eileen Lake.

I woke up a little before 5 and went down to the lake for a bit to look at the mountains.

Heather woke up and I was busy getting ready for our breakfast and the days hike when I looked up and noticed there were deer about 50 feet from our tent. Heather was still inside putting her hair into braids and hadn’t noticed them yet.

I got her attention and we watched as they nibbled on some plants then entered the little meadow by our site and had their own breakfast.

They looked up at us occasionally but didn’t seem to be the least bit concerned with our presence then left the same way they’d come slowly disappearing into the forest.

After our breakfast we threw on our daypacks and got ready for our adventure. We had our compass and three different maps including the map loaded on the Garmin and I had studied the area using Google Earth. That research along with information from a few trip reports and the Northwest Waterfall Survey had us feeling pretty confident that we would at least be able to reach Duncan Falls and possibly Upper Linton Falls if time allowed. I also established a turn around time in order to make sure we had enough time to climb back up from wherever we ended up.

We followed a use path from our campsite through the little meadow along the dry creek into a larger meadow. The use path ended at the larger meadow so we hopped into the dry creek bed planning on following it as far as possible.

We had to leave the creek bed in the meadow for a bit when we started running into small pools of water. We got back in shortly after leaving the meadow but that also didn’t last long because the creek bed was getting deeper and we spotted downed trees blocking it further downhill. We didn’t want to get stuck in the bed and be forced to backtrack so we got out and started bushwacking through the forest.

We gradually made our way downhill toward the meadows surrounding Linton Creek. There was some blowdown in the forest but it wasn’t ever too bad and the vegetation was sparse enough not to cause any problems. We used the Garmin and our maps to keep us heading in the direction we wanted. We were aiming for the northwestern end of the meadows where Linton Creek enters the forest near a series of whitewater. We managed to reach the meadows fairly close to that area and made our way to the glassy creek.

There were a few flowers still blooming including some very tall monkshood.

The South Sister loomed behind us over the creek and meadows.

Shortly after Linton Creek enters the trees it takes a horseshoe bend through a rocky chasm where it puts on its first whitewater show. We were on the south side of the creek and able to side-hill along and around the ridge that the creek bent around which allowed us some good views of the now raging creek.

After rounding the ridge we came to the first small unnamed waterfalls. A pair of short drops were visible through the trees.

A little further was another whitewater slide.

The creek was putting on a good show and we were trying to stick as close as possible to it given the terrain. When we couldn’t see the creek we listened intently for any indication of another fall. The creek then began a second horseshoe bend turning back toward the NW. Somewhere in the middle of the bend was where we would find Duncan Falls. It was one the two main targets for our hike and we heard it well before reaching it. We arrived at the top of the falls and could tell we were not going to be disappointed.

The ridge stayed and made a wide swing around the falls. We were finally able to get a good view though.

It was a spectacular waterfall. After standing in awe of this hidden gem we worked our way down a steep hillside to the creek a little ways below Duncan Falls. We could just see the bottom of the falls through some trees and briefly considered hiking up the creek to reach the base but decided against that in the end. We still had a lot of bushwacking ahead of us and the thought of wet shoes and socks was not appealing plus I was fairly certain that I’d fall in and ruin the camera.

Below Duncan Falls the creek settled down some as the terrain became a little more level.

At one point we found what looked like it could possibly be a beaver pond.

We then came upon another pair of small waterfalls.

In the other trip reports that I had seen the hikers had been on the north side of the creek from Linton Lake until somewhere below Duncan Falls. We had originally planned on staying on the south side of the creek the entire time, partly to be different, and partly because the top tiers of Upper Linton Falls were said to not be visible from the north side of the creek. That changed when we could see that we had arrived at point directly across from the start of a large meadow on the other side of the creek. It looked so much easier than picking our way over and around logs and brush and there was a perfect log to cross the creek on near us. We gave in and walked across the log and entered the meadow. I had read about the meadow and the reports called it marshy but I was hopping the dry year we were having would lessen that, but there was still plenty of wet spongy ground and both of us had soaked shoes in no time.

We aimed for the closest stand of trees and exited the meadow. We took a short side trip to check out one of two small lakes/ponds that the maps had shown toward the back of the meadow.

After checking out the pond we began making our way back toward the creek. Shortly after rejoining the creek we found another log we could cross on and got back to our original plan of being on the south side of the creek for Upper Linton Falls.

We knew we were getting close to our goal but before we got to Upper Linton Falls there was another nice little fall with a great viewpoint.

The next fall we came to was the top tier of Upper Linton Falls.

The roar from the creek was amazing as it thundered steeply down toward Linton Lake.

We found our way down to the third tier where there was a nice viewpoint.

The fourth tier was visible below.

The ridge we were on began to swing away from the creek though. We could see Linton Lake far below and went in search of a decent view but there were too many trees to ever get a good clear look.

We found one final viewpoint of Upper Linton Falls. We appeared to be somewhere between the 5th and 6th tiers.

There was a big drop below us but no way to get a look at the lower tiers from the south side. We decided that just gave us an excuse to come back some day and hike up from Linton Lake to see Lower Linton Falls and get a look at the lower tiers from the north side. In the meantime we sat at the edge of the enormous fall recharging in the cool breeze it generated.

We had made it to our goal just before the established turnaround time and now it was time to climb back up to Eileen Lake. This time we did stick to the south side of the creek avoiding the marshy trap of the meadow. By doing so we located a couple more small falls we’d missed on the way down.

We also managed to find a balloon which happens more often than you’d think (and we’d like) in the forest. We retrieved the garbage and packed it out with us.

We arrived back at Duncan Falls to find it was just as impressive the second time around.

After Duncan Falls we left the creek and took a more direct route toward Linton Meadows which avoided the steep ridge above the whitewater of the first horseshoe bend. White fluffy clouds hung over the mountains when we finally reentered the meadows.

We were paying more attention to the views than to where we were going and wound up passing the spot where we had entered the meadows in the morning. We turned up a different creek bed instead. It looked similar enough that we both thought we remembered certain details as we passed them but as the drainage got steeper and we started noticing more blowdown than we’d remembered we knew we had made a wrong turn. Using the GPS and our maps we could see that we were just on the other side of the ridge we’d come down but we had found a different little meadow here and it’s creek had a little more water which was home to some larger frogs and fish.

We were able to make our way over the ridge at the far end of the meadow and picked up our earlier path just about where we had entered the dry creek bed near the start of our hike.

According to the Garmin we had covered 9.3 miles. We both had a few scrapes and bruises as well as some mosquito bites and Heather had been stung in the shin by a yellow jacket but it had all been worth it. We spent the evening at Eileen Lake watching clouds float by and then disappear over the Three Sisters.

Happy Trails!

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/9319235@N02/sets/72157656375371832