Kennedy creek falls

Last weekend Kerry and I took a bike/hike to Kennedy Creek Falls. The falls aren't too far out of town. They are on land owned by a logging company. I am so used to seeing private proterty and no trespassing signs that I had to take a picture of this

So even though it is private property we were allowed to ride our bikes and hike around. Cool. No fires, No trucks, No motorbikes. I don't see anything about beer or guns. I'm sure those are fine.

Later on I saw another sign that basically said that you can do whatever you want as long as you stay away from the loggers and logging trucks and if you hurt yourself than you were probably doing something stupid and you deserve it so you're on your own. Sweet.

We followed a logging road for a few miles. The map I had showed a logging road leading right to where I thought the falls were so we planned on riding our cross bikes to it and then having a picnic once we got there. I had loaded some waypoints into my little GPS unit so we would know which way to go when the road splits. These logging roads are pretty organic and it always seems to me that they come and go as they please. Every year some are made fresh and others just go away. The forest reclaims land pretty quickly up here.

The map turned out to be over 10 years old and the road we wanted to take has been blocked off for some time now. It was turning back into a singletrack. Normally I would have been stoked but after all the windstorms this year, there were trees down all over the "trail". The trail was also pretty soggy at parts. We ended up just hiding the bikes in the woods a few miles in because we were having such a hard time carrying them over and around all the fallen trees. I can honestly say that if we didn't have my GPS we would have turned around. The trail was degrading so bad we weren't sure if we were going anywhere. We were relieved to find a road about 400 yards from where the falls were supposed to be on my GPS. We found out later that if we had wanted to we could have taken a few different turns and just ridden fire road the whole way there. If we hadn't ditched our bikes we could have taken it back to the car but we were forced to return the way we had arrived.

Once we got there and saw the falls it was all worth it. I had a hard time taking photos. The falls were raging because of all the snow and rain that had fallen in the previous week. There are a series of drops. The first is pretty small. I would consider going over it in an innnertube. The second one seemed to be about 40 feet straight down. It had sheer rock walls and plummeted down what looks like a slot in the rock. The sides of the slot show octagonal formations of igneous rock. I am not a geologist but it looks like some kind of basalt crystals or something. It was hard to photograph the whole falls without falling into the pool below. I hope to get some more shots from the bottom later this summer. The only way I could see to get to the bottom was to crawl along the side of the cliff and somehow make it to the wider area of riverbank below. I wasn't about to try it in my SPD shoes!

This is looking downriver at the top of the falls

This is the big drop. Click to enlarge and see the basalt.

This is the best shot I could get.

I think there are a few more smaller falls down stream but I haven't been able to get to them yet.

I felt like this was a pretty cool waterfall and a great hike but for some reason the trail isn't marked at all and there is almost no info about it on the web. It was kinda hard to find it. For this reason I will not give any information about where it is. If you want to see it or go there you will have to go there with someone who knows where it is. Like me.