Monday, 2/12
I was on SR14 heading for Archer Mountain when I spotted my friend Jim's pickup parked along the bluffs near Cape Horn. I stopped and met him as he was coming back up an old side road. He asked if I'd ever been to Cable Falls - little did I know the adventure that was in store!
After a nice hike through Archer Mountain's High Valley and a shorter hike along an old trail we left the beaten path. A tough 3/4 miles bushwhack later, we arrived at the base of Cable Falls. You can barely find Jim standing by the 20 foot high pile of snow and ice in the photo. This was on Monday, 2/12, and we were both surprised to find so much ice left from the recent cold snap - especially since the elevation at the base of the falls is only about 1,300 feet.
A short distance below the main falls, Jim showed me this 20 footer that we dubbed "Lower Cable Creek Falls".
Here's Jim on the way back along a steep talus slope on the "bushwhack" section of the hike. Most of it wasn't this nice!.
Jim said he thought that there might be another falls further upstream and that piqued my interest to be sure. I mentioned this to another hiker-friend and she was ready to go see what we could find.
Saturday, 2/17:
After a week of rain, the water volume was about double from the previous Monday. Here's Ardith, trying not to fall into the torrent.
Arriving at the ~200 foot high main falls, we marvelled at it's beauty and tried to get a couple of good photos. We got totally soaked for our efforts, and managed to get a couple of pics.
Now all we had to do is figure out how to get out of the canyon to see if there were more falls above us.
The spunky Ardith made like a goat and scaled the cliffs like a pro. In no time, were were above the main falls.
We were happy to find that we could make our way upstream by following close to the streambed and in a short distance could hear yet another waterfall.
For awhile, it looked like this was as close as we could get to this one, but after an arduous 20 minutes of brushy, muddy scramble, we were there.
The climb out of this section of canyon was very steep and slippery - but we made it with the help of lots of well positioned shrubbery for handholds and continued up the canyon. We nearly called it a day and started climbing away from the creek when we heard the unmistakable sound of a large waterfall. What a surprise awaited us!
"Uppermost" Cable Falls. Behind this falls is a deep undercut, about 20 feet or more. The falls is about 60 feet high.
We had lunch and made ready for the final bushwhack push up the cliffs and through the brush to the abandoned logging road we knew was somewhere above us.
A final look back at the "uppermost" Cable Falls. We found the old logging road and made a looping clock-wise track back to the ridge above and to the east of High Valley and hiked out. All-in-all, this hike totaled less than 4 miles but was about 1,800 vertical feet and took us over 4 hours. Tough terrain, indeed!
The ridge above High Valley on the way back:
Map below: The dashed red line is the bushwhack section of our hike. To do this again, I think I'd forgo the smaller "upper" falls and do a CCW loop dropping down to the "uppermost falls from above. The main falls is best approached from the bottom.
| 
