Baileys Chute

The Bailey's Chute trailhead is found 56.5 km (35 mi) north of Highway 5 along the Clearwater Valley Road within Wells Gray Provincial Park. The falls are an easy 10 minute walk from the parking area.Baileys Chute is the most accessible of several small waterfalls on the Clearwater River. What might surprise people who visit this modest 30 foot cascade is the sheer power exhibited by the Clearwater. The Clearwater is a significant river in terms of volume, and the falls will change character substantially depending on the discharge of the river. In the fall, the cascading nature of the falls and bedrock are much more easily seen, often accompanied by Salmon trying to leap the ledges. However, in the spring and early summer, when the volume of the Clearwater River will often reach and exceed 1000 cubic meters per second (35,000 cubic feet per second), the river accelerates over the bedrock with such force that for half of the width of the falls in the center of the river, the surface doesn’t break the aeration point and forms a green tongue of water which extends all the way down the falls.
Even more interesting is the existence of a standing 5 foot tall wave at the base of the falls, formed by the force of the river slamming into the stagnant water below the falls. If you watch carefully below the falls, you can see huge masses of bubbles rising slowly from the depths of the river, then breaking through the surface like ruptured underground caverns being filled with water. Some of these wells seem to take forever to rise from the bottom of the river, and timing the rise out, it would seem that the pool at the base of the falls could be over 100 feet deep!Bailey's Chute was named for Jim Bailey, designer of the current bridge crossing the Murtle River along the Clearwater Valley Road above The Mushbowl. Bailey drown in 1952 after his canoe capsized in the Clearwater River just downstream of the falls which now bear his name.