Herman Creek & Nick Eaton Ridge

Ok, so next up we're taking a look at a few trails at Herman Creek, in the Columbia Gorge at the east end of the town of Cascade Locks. This is of the lesser-known corners of the Gorge; it doesn't have any waterfalls close to the trailhead, so it gets overlooked. On the other hand, the Eagle Creek fire didn't completely incinerate this area, so the trails are open, while more famous spots like Eagle Creek and Wahclella Falls are still closed indefinitely. I had visited once before sometime in the early 90s, but bailed out early due to a combination of not enough instant gratification, and not having a good map and worrying about getting lost. Going back hadn't been a top priority, but it was open, so I figured it was worth another look. I came away really pleasantly surprised; I keep wanting to describe it as "Eagle Creek without all the waterfalls", if that description even makes any sense. I mean, there are a couple of waterfalls there, albeit not on the main creek, and my plan was to visit both of them, even though this involved a bit of backtracking. Leg one involved most of this route, as far as Pacific Crest Falls, and then backtracking to the Herman Bridge Trail - Herman Creek Trail junction. Leg two starts from there, following the main Herman Creek Trail to Nick Eaton Falls.

That was the original plan, but I was ahead of schedule and didn't feel like going home quite yet, so I added a little side trip on the way back. The trails so far had been fairly flat and mellow, and I decided I was up for something a bit more challenging, so when I got to the junction with the Nick Eaton Trail, I took it and headed uphill. And by "uphill", I mean that the trail gains 2000 feet over two miles, climbing up out of the Herman Creek watershed and onto Nick Eaton Ridge, where the trail sort of flattens out, relatively speaking. The steep part also features a very narrow trail with steep dropoffs most of the way, for a bit of added interest. I was mostly interested in the steep part and the viewpoints toward the top, but I continued along the ridge for a bit just to see what it was like (Mostly burned, unfortunately.) I eventually turned around when I came to a trail junction, as a convenient way to track how far I'd gone, and went back down the same way I came up, which was much easier, and not as scary as I'd expected based on how the trip up went. So let's call this leg #3; if you're following my route for some reason, this leg is even more optional than the first two. It was fairly brutal and I was sore for days afterward, to be honest, but I thought it was fun and I'm glad I made the side trip. Your mileage may vary greatly, of course.

On the initial part of leg #2, the trail is unusually wide and graded like a road, which is because a few decades ago it was a road. This stretch is part of the old Herman Creek Road, which began somewhere east of the present-day trailhead and ended up at Herman Camp, which is still a campground and doubles as a big multi-way trail junction a few hundred feet shy of the Nick Eaton trail junction. So at one point visitors were driving large midcentury cars and trucks all the way up here, on what for them would be a narrow, windy Forest Service road. I can't say I'm surprised they eventually closed the road off. The Oregonian database doesn't indicate there were any gory car accidents along the road (and doesn't even say when the road was finally closed), but the possibility must have been in every driver's mind on the way up and back down. Yikes. All things considered, I'd much rather walk it.

Eagle Creek Bridge

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A few photos of the old Columbia River Highway bridge over Eagle Creek, in the Columbia Gorge. It's part of a short surviving segment of the old highway and now serves as part of the freeway offramp from I-84. I took these as an afterthought while visiting nearby Ruckel Creek Falls, and I later decided there might be a bridge post in it. It's kind of a cute little bridge, after all.

Some info about the bridge at Structurae and Oregon Hikers Field Guide. The Eagle Creek page at Columbia River Images includes several photos and old postcard images of the bridge, so that's worth a look too.

The Oregon state archives offers an online version of the 1940 travel guide Oregon: End of the Trail, which was produced by the Federal Writers' Project (a cool New Deal program you'd never get through Congress in this day and age). They've broken the book up into segments that follow the main highways of the day, and the Eagle Creek to Portland segment includes a few interesting photos from Eagle Creek and the west end of the Gorge. Incidentally the main highway at that time was US 30, the wider, flatter, river-level road built to replace the original Gorge Highway. US 30 evolved into today's I-84, so unlike the original highway there aren't a lot of visible reminders of old US 30 that survived to the present day. People tend to forget that we didn't jump directly from the 1914 road to an interstate freeway. And the original highway, picturesque as it was, was already considered obsolete shortly after it was created.

While we're splitting hairs, the old highway wasn't actually the original road through the Gorge; that honor goes to the earlier Dalles and Sandy Wagon Road, a few precarious segments of which also survive. It would be interesting to see that, but my understanding is that visiting the Shellrock Mountain segment involves pulling over & parking on the narrow shoulder of I-84 just around a blind corner, which I don't think I'd be willing to do. So it's nice to see that someone else did it already and put photos on the interwebs.

Prior to the wagon road, the only way to pass through the Gorge was by boat, which was reportedly quite a dangerous way to go. If you've ever played the classic Apple ][ game Oregon Trail (not that I'm of a certain age or anything), you might recall that at The Dalles you have to choose whether to take a raft down the river (and inevitably drown, in my experience), or take the Barlow Road over the mountains (which is occasionally survivable). Here's a history page describing what those two options were like in real life, if you aren't inclined to rely on 1970s video games as historical documents.

In winter the water route became impassable whenever the river froze over, which apparently happened regularly in the 19th Century. The December 13, 1873 Dalles Chronicle described the difficulties in an article titled Ice Holds Trade in Death Grip. The article waxes on about how great it would be if there was a wagon road to Portland. It also mentions a couple of other ideas that were also implemented, like putting in a railroad to Portland, and building locks at the Cascades downstream of the Dalles (at today's, uh, Cascade Locks).

And, of course, before the Oregon Trail there would have been Indian trails through the Gorge dating back thousands of years. Pioneer history buffs tend to ignore that part. Which may be one reason I just can't get too excited about pioneer-era history, come to think of it.

Ruckel Creek Falls expedition

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Today's adventure takes us out to obscure Ruckel Creek Falls in the Columbia River Gorge. Despite its obscurity it's quite easy to get to, once you know how. Ruckel Creek is far overshadowed by Eagle Creek and its many waterfalls just to the west, and this waterfall is really not all that big by Gorge standards. So it's overlooked, but not really unfairly overlooked. On the other hand, if you've been to all the better known waterfalls in the area and you're in the mood to track down one you've never seen before, this is one of the easier ones to do. And then you can tell people about the obscure waterfall you found and thus obtain valuable street cred, if you're into that.

The easiest way to get there is to park at Eagle Creek and walk east. There are two ways to do this: There's a flat asphalt bike path that begins next to the fish hatchery, which runs right next to I-84 for part of its length. The path is actually a repurposed & repaved segment of the old Gorge Highway, including the original bridge over Ruckel Creek circa 1914 or so. The path continues on to the town of Cascade Locks. So don't be totally surprised if you come across joggers or kids on bikes. Actually you could park in Cascade Locks and walk from there. That way would be a couple of miles longer and kind of monotonous most of the way, but you wouldn't need to buy a Forest Service day pass to park, and you could grab an ice cream cone at the East Wind on the way back. But I digress.

There's also a trail that winds around along the edge of the Eagle Creek campground for a bit before dumping you out on the aforementioned bike path. If you want this to feel a little more like a real hike, by all means take the trail, but it's really not all that scenic. If you're just trying to get to the waterfall, you might as well just take the bike path the whole way.

Finding the falls from the path ought to be easy, but for some reason there are no signs for the falls, and there's no official trail to the base. So I'm going to reveeal the semi-super, semi-secret trick for finding the falls.

First, as you're walking along the path, you'll come across a grassy meadow. If you come to the bridge over Ruckel Creek, you've gone too far. You can look down from the bridge and see the top of the falls, but to get to the base you'll need to backtrack a little. In any case, you're looking for an unexplained & unmarked turnout off the path that looks like this:

The above photo is pointing west, just past the turnout. The turnout is where you leave the path and go cross country for a bit. Which sounds vastly more adventurous than it really is. You just need to walk to the far end of the meadow until you come to the edge of the forest. There's no real trailhead here, but if you can find a spot that looks like the next photo, you've found one of the unofficial trails. There may be other entrances, and this one may not look the same when you visit.

Your best bet is to bring a GPS gadget along. You're looking for something in the vicinity of GPS coordinates 45.644810, -121.919522 (i.e. the green arrow on the embedded map). This is the location of the trail, not the location of the waterfall itself.

If you can find the sorta-trailhead, just follow the trail downhill from there. If you can't find it, don't worry. Once you're in the woods you ought to be able to hear the falls, so just walk toward the sound. The falls are going to be downhill and should be on your right. If you find the creek first, just follow it upstream. I don't have exact coordinates for the waterfall itself as I couldn't get a GPS fix there, but it really shouldn't be hard to find.

So there you are, in front of Ruckel Creek Falls in all its glory. If you're up for a real challenge, it seems this is not the only waterfall on Ruckel Creek. There are a number of others (the exact count varies) and several are significantly taller than this one. But getting to them involves bushwhacking through rough terrain. Which I may or may not get around to at some future date.

All of these other waterfalls are even more obscure than the one we're visiting here, and there's a lack of agreement on what their names ought to be. In particular, it's not clear whether this one is "Lower Ruckel Creek Falls", or whether that name applies to one further upstream leaving this one without a proper name. But I've also seen this one called simply "Ruckel Creek Falls". I'm going to go with that in the name of simplicity.

Elsewhere on the interwebs, you can find more info about the falls at Ash Creek Images and
Waterfalls Northwest, and lots of info about all the waterfalls on Ruckel Creek at Oregon Hikers Field Guide.

Dry Creek Falls excursion

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Today's fun adventure takes us out to the Gorge again, this time to little-known Dry Creek Falls, just outside Cascade Locks.

I'd never heard of this waterfall until quite recently, when I ran across a mention of it somewhere on the interwebs. I don't recall where exactly, but I was intrigued. As I've said before, I like to think I know the gorge pretty well. But I don't recall ever hearing of Dry Creek Falls. I was delighted, of course. Another really obscure place to track down and do a piece about, something I do a lot here on this humblest of humble blogs. The falls were fresh blog meat, basically.

So here are several pages describing the typical route to the falls, hiking from the Bridge of the Gods trailhead next to the bridge:

• Trimble Outdoors includes GPS coordinates for several points along the trail, which really helped in creating the fancy embedded Google map you see above here.
• A good page at OregonHikers (and another page about the falls themselves)
• A brief description with photos at NWHiker.
• A longer description & slideshow at Johann & Sandra's Web
• OregonWaterfalls has good, clear directions and a photo.
• The Lake Oswego Hikers have a nice photoset of the falls and the hike there.
• Not a lot of info at Waterfalls Northwest, which is kind of unusual.

So the multiply-aforementioned hike is the usual way to get to the falls, but I'd already done Hamilton Mountain earlier in the day, and I didn't feel like another four miles just then. The trail didn't sound that fabulous, either, starting at a rather dubious parking lot next to the bridge, traipsing through a residential area, crossing under the freeway, walking along a powerline access road for a while, and finally ending up on a regular road, which you walk on the last bit of the way to the falls. When I saw that last bit, a little light went on: It doesn't sound like the journey is the reward this time around, so I'll just cut to the chase and drive to the falls on that road. It's a dirt road, but it's on the map and everything, it'll be just fine, I figured. So that's what I did, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it to everyone out there. The journey is definitely not the reward this way either. Here's a typical stretch of Dry Creek Road:

Actually that's a better-than-average stretch. Most of the time I was too busy dodging large rocks and trying not to high-center the car or get stuck or break down or anything nasty to take any photos. It's your basic Forest Service type road, so if you've got a pickup or some sort of vehicle with high clearance and preferably 4wd, the road may not be any big deal for you. And feel free to mock my puny midsize sedan if you like, but I'll have you know it's been driven offroad more than most SUVs ever will. The key thing to be aware of is that there's an unmarked fork in the road part of the way up, which you can see on the map above. You want to take the left fork. Trust me on this. The right fork goes rather steeply uphill to a pair of cell phone towers surrounded by razor wire and all sorts of threatening signs, including one saying the area exceeds FCC standards for radio-frequency emissions. There's a nice view actually, and I could see the place being a local makeout spot; I imagine all that cell phone radiation has got to have some sort of contraceptive effect. The effect just might not be temporary, is the only problem. So we've established, I hope, that you want to stick to the left fork. Then you just keep driving until the road ends, a few miles further on. (He says, making it sound oh, so simple.) There's no mistaking it when you've arrived. The road ends at a small parking lot, with a sheer cliff rising behind it. Nearby there's a small, old dam of unknown age and purpose, situated on Dry Creek just downstream of the falls:

There's even a (possibly unofficial) fire pit, if you're in the mood for a party. Whoever was here obviously enjoys Coors far more than I do. In other words, it could have been just about anyone.

And just steps from the road, the falls themselves:

I'm sure the falls would be much more popular if the road was paved, and I'm kind of surprised they haven't paved it. Cascade Locks could sure use any extra tourist dollars that might bring in. The town's a bit of blue-collar "Old Oregon", historically dependent on the river and the timber industry, not so much on the tourist trade. Even today there's nary an upscale boutique in sight, and all the rich Portlanders drive right by on I-84 on their way out to Hood River. That's not entirely a bad thing, mind you. In recent years downtown Hood River's become sort of like a miniature Pearl District tilted at a 45 degree angle. I'd hate to see the whole state get Pearlified, and it pleases me to no end that the East Wind Drive-In remains the big fast food joint in town. If there are any national chain restaurants in town at all, I haven't noticed them. People in the know usually think of the East Wind as the ice cream place in town, but they also do a great classic bacon burger, and -- most importantly -- they fry up a mean tater tot. And they aren't doing it just to be hipster-retro-ironic, either. Besides, tater tots count as carbo loading, right? So I don't really want to see the place change dramatically, but the town's traditional industries have had a rough last few years, well, last few decades really, and the town could use a little extra revenue coming in. Cascade Locks has been trying to bring in an Indian casino for the last few years, so clearly they aren't entirely opposed to having a few extra tourists in town.

I'm no economic development guru, and I'm not sure how many more people you'd reel in from I-84 with a civilized road to the falls and a few signs indicating how to get there. And generally speaking I don't advocate putting in paved roads to every possible point of interest. But, you know, they've got a possible tourist attraction right there on their doorstep, and they could use the cash, so it just seems like a shame. I suppose that as a working class sort of town, people tend to drive pickups, not front wheel drive import sedans, and maybe it just hasn't occurred to anyone that the road's a bit on the iffy side. To be honest, my bottom line here is that I didn't enjoy the drive too much, and I'm trying to make a solid case that somebody ought to do something about it, dammit. Well, that, or I suppose I could just park at the Bridge of the Gods trailhead next time, and hoof it to the falls like everyone else does.

In any case, here are a few more photos of the falls, and the rather antique water works just downstream. I'm guessing they were built no later than the 1940s, probably earlier than that. Since I'm just a software geek and not a real engineer, I'm not sure what the mini-dam is for. It looks like it diverts water out of the creek into a pipe, but whether the water goes to hydropower, drinking water, irrigation, flood control, or the remains of an old log flume, I really couldn't say. Everyone says it hasn't been used in years, in any event.

Using my powers of Google-fu, I did manage to track down a corporate history page mentioning the former ARMCO Metal Products Division -- which now exists under a different name, with a different parent company. The ARMCO firm still exists too, under the new name AK Steel. But it looks like the first link is the company you'd want to talk to in the unlikely event you needed spare parts for this contraption.

Other photos of the falls from around the interwebs, many of them a distinct improvement over mine: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]