Upper and Lower Lost Creek Falls (Burnt Lake area) - 8/09

[mattisnotfrench]

Since there are plenty of Burnt Lake trip reports here and it was a rainy, cloudy day to boot, I'm just going to stick to the off-trail portion. I haven't seen much written about Lost Creek Falls, even though there's a spur trail to the top. Though very pretty, it isn't all that tall or that notable.

On the way up, we took the spur trail to the top and I was frustrated that the trail didn't lead to a frontal view of the falls. I suppose I could have waded the creek but I didn't feel like getting wet on a cooler day with much of my hike ahead of me...

So, on the way back, I decided to take off down the hill for a frontal view with Wendy waiting up above. I got to the bottom in about two minutes (an easy little thrash). It turns out Lost Creek Falls is even prettier from below than I could have imagined:





Lost Creek was very beautiful as well:



With that taken care of, I headed back to the hillside I had descended. Near where I was to start my climb back up I noticed a horizon line on the creek. I signaled to Wendy I'd be back up in a minute and then headed down to an overlook of the horizon line on the creek. It turned out to be a lower falls:



This was a 15-20 foot tall tier of a larger falls, as I could see another horizon line just below it:



Though I wanted to continue downstream, I remembered my worried girlfriend up above and decided to return to the trail. I'll be back someday though.

This would be a fairly easy and quick bushwhack for anyone interested. The lower falls, which I've never heard anything about (though I could just be oblivious) appears to be larger than the falls with the spur trail to it. I didn't get a look down the lower (lowest?) tier of the falls though.

Anybody up for going back to investigate?

[Splintercat]

Great find, Matt! I've only been as far as the bench, where you see this falls:



But it looks to me like this drop is the one in the background on your first photo, and there are three additional drops..? Cool! The bushwhacking isn't so bad in that area, either -- except for running into the Zigzag Mountain Ghost Lady (and this is about where we saw here). But that's another story...

Thanks for the report!

Tom

[pdxgene]

It's pretty easy to cross Lost Creek at the top on those logs and then loop around to good viewspots on the other side. I haven't actually gone down but there's a couple spots I scouted out that would be pretty easy to get down and then back up. There's a bunch of pics from that side in the Archive section from the old site.