Shady Creek Falls

A few photos of Shady Creek Falls, the waterfall you pass early on the Multnomah Falls trail, before you even get to the Benson Bridge. It's actually a fairly big waterfall in its own right, but it's overshadowed by its famous neighbor, and you can't get a very good look at this one. There isn't even a sign with the name; the name isn't on most maps either, and I only learned it had a name from the internet. Maybe they figure a sign would give people ideas, and they might to try to scramble up to the falls or something.

The link above speculates that Shady Creek here is the water supply for the Multnomah Falls Lodge, and they don't want people messing with the stream. Although if it is, the creek then flows right under the Multnomah Falls trail and at that point anyone can spill a pumpkin spice latte into it, or drop their lutefisk-n-sauerkraut sandwich into it, and dogs with weak bladders are welcome on the trail, so I'm not really sure what additional damage there would be if there was a side path up to a better view of these falls.

A forum thread over at OregonHikers.org includes a photo from someone who scrambled up the hill on an, um, unofficial basis, and it's a fairly attractive waterfall (though no rival to the big waterfall just up the main trail). Another poster mentions something about a potential $5000 fine and/or five years as a guest of Uncle Sam just for going off-trail around Multnomah Falls. Other sources indicate it's more like $800 or even $250 and no imprisonment. Still, it's something to bear in mind.

Anyway, I just searched back through my blog archives to find a Multnomah Falls post to link to. And I don't see one. Eight years of this blog, and not once have I done a Multnomah Falls post, it seems. Apparently it wasn't obscure enough to earn its own post, or something. I do have a Flickr photoset, so I linked to that instead. Still, I may have to do something about this omission at some point. It feels like a rather embarrassing oversight, the more I think about it. Still, I'm going to go ahead and publish this post first. It would be completely in the spirit of this humble blog to do a Shady Creek Falls post before even considering a Multnomah Falls post.