The Waterfalls of Star Creek 5-17-09

[airdrum]

Hi All, I'm happy to report I have actually done something cool again, finally!

First of all, the credit has to be given to Don, our intrepid guide and Jamie, who brainstormed this crazy plan.

On Sunday, Jamie, Don, Larry, and I made a trip to see the double falls on Star Creek. Below is a description and some pictures, I also have a video, due to excessive swearing I had to replace the audio with something, so you may want to turn off the music!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cEcKye0Tcc

We weren't even close to where we wanted to drop down to the creek before we felt the collective urge, found a nice looking slope and started bombing down.

Feeling the urge and scouting the descent


About midway down we realized just how much elevation we were losing and would have to get back. As we contemplated traversing along at about the same elevation Jamie spotted the remains of a CAR a few hundred feet below us. Well, this was a major find, we had to investigate!

Eventually we arrived at the badly mangled remains of a van or truck, I'll let the the other explorers explain better, but it was pretty cool. I didn't get any photos as I was already bandaging up. Based on the nearly thousand foot tumble it took, it occurred to us the last people to take this "trail" may have been the vehicle occupants, yow! Hopefully it was just dumped and not Thelma & Louise'd.

We were now so far down the ridge we minus well go to the stream, and now we entered the perpetual alder salmonberry devils club steam bed maze. After what seemed like too long we managed to climb up to the base of the lower falls, this was not even on the original agenda to visit these falls, and at this point we realized just how much more elevation we were going to have to do than the 1800 we signed up for!



At least I finally got a decent scale shot with Don running behind the falls, what a pressure washer!






Even the first time I visited these falls in person I didn't see a way around them, but trusty Don had scouted a route a few weeks earlier, and up we went into what would be the sketchy-est activities of the day. Solid 4th class most of the way with one little section of 5th class, simply because the price of a slip was guaranteed death at the base of the falls, somehow amongst my vertigo trembles I managed to get out my camera near this spot and grab this shot of Jamie, this shot is NOT posed, wow, one of the best I have ever taken I think, and an instant hearth attack for his relatives!



For the most part you are moving 3-points-of-contact up the rock and if you slipped it'd be a nasty tumble, but every once in a while when we had to get near the stream, that's when the potential danger was very high due to the vertical cliffs leading to the stream, if you do this, exercise caution near the streams, and try to find routes that avoid the vertical falls. I believe if we spend enough time it would have been possible to keep our entire journey in the non-fatal-slip category, but hey, we were following Don!

Then Don decided to go investigate the top of the falls, plus now we can gauge the lenght of that slide to get a full estimate of the falls!



Soon later we arrived at one of the little seen falls between the twins and lower falls. Here we realized Don's camera had fallen out, and despite a search, it is lost amongst the mess of alder and brush we were torured by all day. Please, if you want an adventure and some bruises, look at the gps track and go back and try to find the camera!!!

Jamie and I then went up to the top of that falls via a slippery but safe slot canyon and looked down. This is when I got my one non-glared shot of the day, I'm actually quite happy with it. Looking over the brink at St.Helens.



This is also the base of a side by side star creek and tributary waterfall(s) and after a lunch break it was time to finally find the double falls.

The brush that had been killing us up to this point finally subsided and we marched on what felt like goat trails up to the dual falls. I got an awesome shot of Jamie making his way up with St.Helens watching up ominously.



The dual falls is spectacular! Hard to photograph, and the glare wiped out my attempts, but getting up here without snow would open up more opportunities. There was another tinge of heart pounding exposure as we traversed around this falls but nothing to be too freaked out about, certainly doable by the casual scrambler. Eventually, on top of the dual falls, we found some nice snow which buried the nasty nasty brush and we slowly dug our feet in and marched the remaining 400 vertical feet to the trail.

Here's views of the twin falls as we made our way up.









The walk back to the car was uneventful besides some rad clouds over Hood.



All in all it was a great, but very trying day. I can't count how many cuts scratches and bruise on my arms from the alder and salmonberry, but it was just one of those days. Star Creek canyon never ceases to beat us up, but at least we got into shape in style!

[anna in boots]

What a lovely composition of gravity and machismo, I enjoyed it immensely. I especially enjoyed the part where I wasn't climbing up behind Jamie, who shall hereafter be referred to as Spiderman. That'll learn ya to follow Don; he's a naughty little teenager trapped in a respectable adult's body. Now you know. Well done, airdrum.

anna in boots

[airdrum]

Whops, forgot to add Don's map and GPS, we did around 3000' vertical on the day.

[Don Nelsen]

Andy,

Thank you for putting together this excellent report and narrative! Nicely done. Total for the day turned out to be 3,279 vertical and 6.1 miles. We gotta do this more often!

Thanks also go to Larry and Jamie who were great hiking partners and never once did anyone whine or gripe - even after getting attacked by devils club or getting a stick in the face. Great crew and fun times.

Reward offered: The map shows the location of my camera - just a Nikon L60, but with a lot of pics on the chip and at least I'd like to get that back. Looks like rain late Tuesday so the camera likely will not survive long. I'm offering $100 reward to get it back, though, dead or alive - I want that chip! (this may be the hardest earned $100 ever, but who's counting?)

- Don

[Don Nelsen]

What a lovely composition of gravity and machismo, I enjoyed it immensely. I especially enjoyed the part where I wasn't climbing up behind Jamie, who shall hereafter be referred to as Spiderman. That'll learn ya to follow Don; he's a naughty little teenager trapped in a respectable adult's body. Now you know. Well done, airdrum.

anna in boots

Anna, I believe you have me figured out! (except for the respectable part)

dn

[mattisnotfrench]

This looks amazing. I'm green with envy! Great job documenting such an amazing area!

[jaimito]

Great day once again guys, thanks for coming along Larry, Don and Andy. So Andy I'll follow up with a few shots of the falls above the first big horsetail falls. But first I wanted to throw in 2 shots of Don. Here's Don running from behind the falls… Classic



And here's another shot of Don above the Horsetail, you can see him standing next to the stream. I really like this shot because you get a real sense of how awesome this canyon is…



So once you traversed over and above the horsetail we made our way threw more Alder and then onto a snow patch towards the next series of falls. This is the approach to the next falls, there are actually 2 double falls right above one another, each with a upper portion that drops vertically onto a lower slide… Brian Swan will have to determine how to categorize these 2… so here they are…



Here's Andy on the lower slide portion for scale.



To the left of this splash pool there is a very cool rock ledge, you can either scramble up this to get to the next double falls or traverse up a little chute… either way it wasn't too bad just a little wet.



Once above, this is the next double falls, probably my favorite one of them all. Andy is there on the left for scale, once again.



Here's another perspective with Andy still in the shot…



There is also a side falls which I suspect would be dry by August.



So after lunch we all kept climbing… onward and upward to the upper most double falls… Here's Andy scoping the route.



So since Andy posted a shot of me climbing, here's Andy below me climbing up. We did actually take the safer route, it looks hairy but wasn't actually too bad. I made sure to stop climbing when Andy was climbing to minimize any rock fall.



Here are the double falls, sorry about the lighting, glare was a major problem all day.



So after climbing to the base of these falls, the day was far from over - we still had to climb out. This is a nice parting shot I think - Larry climbing out. Thanks again guys… Hey I think we have to name some of these don't you think?



Cheers / Jamie

[Sore Feet]

Slide Alder hell aside, you guys are nuts for actually wanting to climb that much elevation in that short of a span. I went up above High Valley on Monday and I just about collapsed at the top (though I did do two other hikes earlier in the day too, so part of it was exhaustion). That thing would likely kill me. Guess I'll just have to get in better shape then attempt it.

As far as the two hidden middle falls go, depending on how far apart they are from one another, they could potentially be considered separate. If you could stand at the top of one and see the other one, there's a case to be made to consider them two drops of one waterfall. I recall seeing shots from the Starway Trail that made it look like they are close enough together for that to be the case.

[Splintercat]

Great reports, Andy and Don -- that's big country in there! Geographically, it looks pretty compact on the map, but the photos show otherwise. Amazing..! Names are definitely in order -- maybe Andy shouted a few under the soundtrack on the video..?

-Tom

[chameleon]

Well Andy and Jamie, its good to see you guys actually get outside on occasion. Great report. Very wierd about the car. How old was the car, was it like an etzle or a modern car? My guess would be it was a couple of teenagers who thought it would be the coolest thing on earth to roll an old car down a slope.
-Zach