Swift Creek Falls

RATING - 50.0

VR - 8.0 (Big) HR - 6.0 SR - 2/20

TYPE OF APPROACH - Bushwhack

DIFFICULTY - Extremely Difficult

LOCATION - Swift Creek Trail

TYPE - Plunge

HEIGHT - 140'

WIDTH - 20'

DIRECTIONS - No directions provided. Dangerous approach. Just look at it on Google Earth and pretend you're there.

Swift Creek Falls is sort of the bane of my existence. It is a large waterfall located in an extremely deep, rugged, tree-lined canyon on the east side of Mt. Baker. The falls appear to contain a large plunge around 100' in height that ends in a nice pool of water. Below there it looks like the creek continues to run through a series of small bedrock drops. When attempting to view the falls in 2016, the view on the left was the best that I could find. It shows the bottom 40-50' of the main drop. Even getting this view involved standing at the edge of the 400' deep canyon and peeking through a tiny hole in the trees. I do know one group who rappelled down to the base and got a good view so it's technically possible. It might also be theoretically possible to rockhop upstream from where the trail crosses the creek downstream to get a partial view, but that would only work when the volume was low late in the year.