One of my favorite things to do is to find a location on Google Earth that is devoid of people, buildings, roads, and trails then hike there. One of these locations was an unmarked falls along a small mountain creek. I knew it was a waterfall because the satellite photo indicated a large elevation change in a very short distance along the creek. I figured that after heavy rain the falls would have to be very large. I convinced my friends to join me on the adventure. The plan that I developed was to find a road that crossed the creek below the falls and then hike up the creek.
The departure location
It is a little crazy to go hiking up a creek without a trail or a decent map. However, it isn't as if you are going to get lost as long as you stick to the creek. The real concern is getting injured so far away from civilization. We were fairly well equipped with safety gear and first aid kits.
Hydration is important
One of the great features of the Pacific Northwest is the large trees. The cedars and the douglas firs can get downright massive. They are not as tall as the sequoias in California but they are nearly is wide at the base.
Large cedars lined the banks of the creek
The beginning of the hike was fairly easy as the big trees did not allow for a high density of small plants to grow underneath them.
The hike begins
Somebody lost a tire and a flood carried it to this location. There has to be a story behind it somewhere.
Do you need this size of tire? I can tell you where to find it ;)
A few miles up the creek the journey became much more difficult and a lot slower. The large trees became fewer and fewer which allowed for the small plants to grow in large density. We had to spend more time zigging and zagging through the brush. To make things worse many of these plants had spikes.
An Ewok celebrating the fall of the Empire
As the hike continued, the elevation gain increased. I thought we must be getting close to the falls. We could feel the banks of the creek closing in on us. There was less room to walk and water was crashing past us at a greater rate.
This looked promising
Finally, we reached a small falls. It was much smaller than I had estimated. It was a lot of work to get to that point and too be honest there was quite of bit of disappointment. I started to wonder if we were in the right location. Our group discussed going further up but wisely decided it was time to head back. We were beat and the chances of finding a bigger falls above were slim.
Not the real thing but it had to do for the time being.
Hiking on the way back was much more difficult than the way there. We lacked the determination to push through our weariness that we had before. We were somewhat beaten. One by one we went down. It seemed we were having to battle the roots and rocks at our feet. Staying balanced required all of our concentration. It was about halfway back that I fell catching myself with my hand. Unfortunately, my wrist scraped a sharp stick on the way down leading to a bloody cut.
An injury on the trip back
When I had a chance to review our trip against the satellite images I made a surprising discovery. We hiked up the wrong creek!!! Admitting that to my friends was more than embarrassing and I could only hope that they would trust me to lead them on another attempt at finding Rock Creek Falls. I did have a valid excuse for the forest map that we were using was old and our cross street location was incorrect. It turns out the road we were using to identify the creek had indeed moved from Rock Creek to the next creek over. My friends and I made two more attempts before finally finding Rock Creek Falls.