Buster Brown Falls

Buster Brown Falls is located behind the North Cascades Institute in the Ross Lake National Recreation Area of the North Cascades National Park complex. The trailhead is found at the end of the Diablo Dam road, which is found 1 1/2 miles east of the turnoff for Diablo at the bridge over Gorge Lake. The Diablo Dam road crosses its namesake Dam and ends at a parking area just after crossing Sourdough Creek. The most direct way to the falls is to take the Diablo Lake trail from the parking lot until you reach the Sourdough Creek Trail (first left after crossing an access road, trail is marked by two large boulders), then follow it to its end. Total distance from the parking area is about 1 1/2 miles. The trail currently ends just before the falls come into view, so either scrambling across Sourdough Creek or up the adjacent slope (which is very steep and covered in Wild Rose bushes) is necessary to actually see the waterfall.Buster Brown Falls is one of those out-of-the-way gems that very few people know about and even fewer have actually seen. I'd personally known of the falls for about 4 years but had never had a chance to seek it out until 2009. The falls are situated on a seasonal stream that drains off the southwest side of Sourdough Mountain. Where this stream intersects Sourdough Creek itself, it plunges 165 feet over a lofty cliff. The falls are actually in all likelihood well over 250 feet tall, but the upper portions of the falls can only be seen from Highway 20 across the lake, so there is no way to verify the height of any upper extremities of the falls. Because the drainage basin is very steep and quite small, the falls are limited to flowing during snowmelt season and usually run dry by the middle of July, if not sooner. The second hurdle to visiting this waterfall is the access restrictions to the Diablo Dam road, which is gated daily at 4:30pm, so be sure to allot enough time to hike in and out before the gate closes.This waterfall has no name to the best of my knowledge, so I've called it for the nearby Buster Brown Flats.