Two More Waterfalls on Ruckel!

[jaimito]

Sweet… I had a feeling as well there was another one up there. Don lets put a trip together in the next couple of weeks, maybe end of March? Zach it would be cool if all three of us could get together…

Jamie

[raven]

Zach,

There is a fine line between having just barely enough warmth in your clothing and barely not enough for the time of exposure and your output level. On three occasions, iirc, I let my core temperature drop a bit more than I thought over a period of hours, with the result that my hands became incapable of fine motor actions and too weak for most other uses. Not much of a problem given the circumstances, but it could have been if I were soloing (I was doing a lot of soloing around then) and I had discovered the problem at an inopportune moment.

It seems to me that your method requires a high energy throughput while drying the wet clothing. But maybe not, since poly does not stay very wet, and a waterproof-breathable controls both the rate of drying and air infiltration. (Come to think about it, I've been in icewater to my thighs unexpectedly at times, and continued on my travels.) I assume that you are not in the water very deeply very continuously, so the ice water against your skin is not refreshed that often. Am I right about that?

I'll give it a go sometime; it opens possibilities I've been overlooking.

What kind of shoes do you use? What kinds and sizes of rope, slings and other climbing gear carried?

Steve

[Don Nelsen]

Sweet… I had a feeling as well there was another one up there. Don lets put a trip together in the next couple of weeks, maybe end of March? Zach it would be cool if all three of us could get together…

Jamie

I'm in!! Water level should rise a bit as the weather warms so the photo ops will only get better. I'm pretty flexible on time if I get some a few days notice as to when you can go.

As for staying warm once soaked: I use wool - head to toe. Though sometimes a bit uncomfortable shortly after exiting ice water I manage to stay good to go. On longer gigs where I may be sitting around for awhile or moving relatively slowly thus cooling down, I've been known to bring a complete change along. I've only been hypothermic once and did not enjoy the experience. (Mt. Hood climb, mid '80's when a strong wind came up as I ascended the chute - had to hole up in the 'schrund for an hour or more to get back to normal.)

Don

[Splintercat]

Awesome, Zach - a pair of excellent finds! That upper falls is quite nice, too - looking forward to your post-winter photos!

Tom

[chameleon]

Don and Jamie - I'd be up for a return trip, but I'd rather wait a month or two to make certain any pesky snow patches have dried up! This would be a beautiful falls to hit after a week of heavy rain. If you guys do end up heading up in the next week or two, I'd reccomend skipping the very uppermost part of Ruckel, which you can see from the trail anyway. If you just travel up the trail until you gain your first view of upper ruckel creek, and then break off down to it, you don't have to go that far before you'll hit it.

Tom - You should get up to that uppermost falls too - its really not that bad. I'd say its only slightly harder than upper bridal veil falls (albeit with a bit longer approach). I think you could certainly make a loop going down to the next one as well, without having to get down the "biggest" falls. There seems to be a broad, easy to travel ridge that I suspect leads straight uphill to the trail from the top of the "biggest" falls. If you did that you could avoid anything 3rd or 4th class altogether. (And that 1/3 mile of stream above the big one is awesome... the stream widens a bit, there's plenty of room to walk and even lots of flat places where you could have a nice quiet night camping - just a really good "feel" there.)

-Zach

[Splintercat]

Thanks, Zach - so you're saying that you could drop down to the upper pair and head back up to the trail without rappels? That's intriguing. I do like that upper falls! I still haven't been to the bottom set yet - hope to do that this year.

Tom

[chameleon]

Yep, you don't really need a rope anywhere in the canyon (other than helping you get down from the big falls more safely) - though it certainly is more fun!

[Don Nelsen]

I was looking more for some good excercise today and thought I'd head up to Ruckel and get some beta for a later return trip but Zach's info was spot-on. We found the falls very easily and didn't even get wet! Most of the snow is gone and the ridgelines we took were both pretty easy. Our route downwards was a little harder but we took another line on return and it was way better. We just followed good game trails up the ridge on the return and it was only about 300 vertical feet back to the main trail.

Here's the spunky miss Ardith at the top of the big falls. BTW, we measured this at 65" +/- by extrapolating Ardith's height with the falls and also by GPS - the GPS said the bottom is 2,117' and the top is 2,186'.



Here is where we returned to the main trail - in the woods just a few feet past where Ardith is standing:



And here is a detailed map. Turned out to be 7.5 miles and about 2,900' vertical for the day.

[chameleon]

Awesome Don! My directions may have been accurate, but apparently my elevation wasn't - closer to 2200 ft rather than 2400 - that's good to know! I'm glad you made it up there. It's a pretty fantastic falls in person isn't it. I'm also fairly surprised by how quickly that snow has melted!! - when I went last week, I hit snow at the Indian fire-pits and it just got deeper the further up I went. The area where you took the photo of your friend on the trail was completely covered. I guess the sunshine this week has been doing some good! Thanks for posting these pics.
-Zach
p.s. And thanks for the info on Cable Creek - I'm going to have to look into that.

[chameleon]

Adam,
I just looked up Pup Creek Falls, and you're right! This does resemble a shorter, stouter version of Pup Creek Falls. It also kind of looks like upper Blackbear falls on Fern Creek (Eagle Creek tributary). I'm going to have to check out Pup Creek falls sometime - the photo I saw on Flicr of it was very elegant! Thanks for the mentioning it - I can't wait to see that one in person!
-Zach