Rock Creek (Alternate, South Cascades)

This is a tributary / alternate "shortcut" approach to Rock Creek in Skamania. It enters just above R4 in Rock Creek's technical section. You'll miss the first three rappels, but this approach makes up for it with: 1) an easier/shorter approach, and 2) an opportunity to descend a monster 300ft+ ramping waterfall. The cover photo is only the lower 2/3rds of this gigantic falls.

There are two choices on the approach: 1) If hiking, continue up the road about 0.5mi and, just past a bend in the road, look for the Snag Creek trailhead on the right. (USGS maps do not show the correct location of the trail.) The lower part of the trail is a bit overgrown and was a little tricky to follow as of 2025. It basically heads northeast along the edge of the clearcut and then is easier to find when it enters the forest just above Snag Creek. The trail then follows the ridge northwest. 2) Alternatively, shuttle ~1mi up the road to a turnaround in an old clearcut, and bushwhack your way uphill about 0.1mi (+150ft elevation) to meet the trail. The trail switchbacks up onto the plateau, gaining about 600ft, before flattening out and becoming easy hiking. Pass a large signboard where you pass from DNR land to National Forest. Small wooden posts also mark the mileage. The second post is a good marker to break off trail and bushwhack your way down to drop into the Alt Rock tributary.

Head downstream through some nice sections of bedrock. Emerging from the forest, the tributary plunges over what is probably a giant 300ft high, multi-tier falls, shedding all of its elevation in one go. In exploring in summer 2017, we ended out doing three rappels to get down, each time running a 60m rope almost all the way out to the end per the horizontal distance involved. The falls has a lot of ramping; beware getting off the rope prematurely. Slipping and going for a tumble would be a really bad idea most of the way down. This falls must be really impressive when it sees high water. Continue downstream passing through occasional areas of bedrock. It's a bit of a walk. The lower end of the tributary involves a lot of boulder-hopping. R5: 15ft down a ramp into the main fork of Rock Creek. Downclimb carefully or rappel. You will enter Classic Rock just above where the lower sequence begins. The flow will likely quadruple at this point.