Stack Creek (East)

Current Status: Closed. This creek was overrun by the Beachie/Santiam Fire in Sept 2020 and has been closed. Please check on local closures before planning a trip to this area. When the area eventually reopens, use extreme caution when descending the creek. Between landslides, fallen trees, and loose rocks, this area may be unstable and dangerous for years to come. The canyon may have changed dramatically. Do not rely on the beta below being accurate. This is a committing canyon - check water levels before descending as most rappels will be directly in the water course. Stack Creek is long day with lots of bushwhacking. Expect a very high pay-to-play. The water flow checkpoint is a large shallow pool right before the confluence of East Stack Creek with Stack Creek. You will have to scramble down from the road to the stream and hike upstream to the confluence, marked by a giant boulder in the middle of the watercourse.

From the trailhead, follow the trail toward the summit of Henline Mountain. Elevation gain is about 2400’ and took about 2hrs. Trail becomes faint near the top and vanishes abruptly at the summit. Thrash north of the summit a couple of minutes, then NE to drop down a ridgelet for 500-600ft through thick rhodies. Henline's NE ridge soon appears, stay on top of it to find a game trail. Scramble descender's right around a rock step at one point, then skirt right around three large rock formations blocking access along the ridge. The last is big and dropped down 100ft to skirt around it on the base of a small talus slope. Keep going to reach a mini-ridgelet just before the forest ends in a giant bedrock bowl (~4000ft elevation). It appears the party who did the original descent of East Creek may have dropped directly down from the Sidewalk into the drainage. From where we dropped the packs, we backtracked southwest a hundred yards or so and went down an easier ridgeline to visit the two tarns located just west of the bedrock basin. The northern tarn was full of algae and nastiness; we skirted around the east side and climbed up to a local high point and dropped down the far side to find the outflow from the southern tarn which seems to be the primary source of water for the East Fork. We arrived at the outflow perhaps +45min from leaving the Sidewalk. From the tarn outflow, follow the stream down an interesting crack-fault about 2min to where the creek abruptly goes around a corner and drops down a fan cascade. This is the top of R1.