McGillicuddys Falls

RATING - 26.4

VR - 3.6 (Sm/M) HR - 4.0 SR - 12/20

TYPE OF APPROACH - Bushwhack

DIFFICULTY - Medium

LOCATION - Lake Cavanaugh Area

TYPE - Segmented

HEIGHT - 80'

WIDTH - 100'

GPS - N48 19.624 W121 56.436

ELEVATION - 1649'

DIRECTIONS - Drive East from I-5 through Arlington on Highway 530. About 16.5 miles from the freeway, turn left onto E Brooks Creek Road. There are a mess of roads leading off from here but if you stay on the main road after the first fork you should be OK. Take the following forks: left, right, right, left, left. Just after this final left you will go over the creek on a bridge. Keep driving up the road, taking a sharp right at the next fork and then parking at a small pullout just before the next junction. There should be a small stream just off the road on the downhill side. Follow this down, staying on the right side of the creek for about 800' (300' vertical drop) until you come out at the falls.

This nice pair of falls occurs where two branches of a small, unnamed creek join together in side-by-side waterfalls. The left side is the larger volume of the two, dropping about 25' in a pretty fan, before curtaining another 20' and finishing by cascading another 15' or so. The right segment is a plunge of about 80' tall, but on a smaller stream. When I first scouted the area a couple weeks before I found the falls, the creek had easily three times as much water so it looks like this could be really impressive in the right conditions.

There's nothing too difficult about getting to the falls but it does require scrambling down a somewhat steep slope (around 35 degree angle). I would imagine the right segment dries out in the summer but there should always be some water in the left half. I named the falls after McGillicuddys Peak from which the streams originate.