Dog Creek

Dog Creek is is another nice canyon destination in the Columbia Gorge. There are two primary objectives here: 1) Lower Dog Creek (3C III) - This page describes the recommended route and visits the best part of the canyon, doing an out & back from the bottom. This approach requires teams to be comfortable with some class 3-4 scrambling and/or setting safety lines for protection. A good creek for training and practice. 2) Upper Dog Creek (3C IV) - A full descent of Dog starting from the radio towers atop Cook Hill. This option is long and strenuous and takes most of a day. The upper drainage is wild, overgrown, seldom-visited, and rugged. This route is described on a separate page. A number of other approaches to Dog have all been tried and none of them are good.

The recommended route on Dog Creek is to do an out & back from the bottom. Hike up the creek bypassing all of the falls, then turn around whenever you like for a technical descent. Groups commonly turn around above the Meditation Pool sequence (R1). Pro: This approach allows all the falls to be scouted in advance. Con: Your team needs to be comfortable scrambling on, sometimes loose, class 3-4 terrain and route-finding. Consider setting up one or more safety lines for your team.

Note that the bypass descriptions are from the POV of going downstream. Most canyon teams will come up the canyon from below, bypassing all of the falls, and turn around here to start their descent. The creek narrows up and plunges over two drops into a deep pool. This section of narrows can be dangerous in high water. A hydraulic and strong current may be present. Historically, the Meditation Pool has been rather abused by day hikers. Please remove any fixed ropes or other installations you find here. There's still some hardware and other junk affixed to the canyon walls. Ropes are unnecessary to play in the pool or bypass this falls. Bypass: From the top of the falls, backtrack up-canyon 100ft, then thrash out DCL. There's an animal trail if you can find it. Head up through the poison oak and traverse the rim, until you find a place to rappel back in downstream of the falls. Alternately, downclimb a dirty gulley (class 3-4). Below R1 the drops come in quick succession.