Fly Creek Falls

Fly Creek produces an exceptionally scenic waterfall where it plunges 82 feet into a rugged canyon alcove, surrounded by high cliffs and huge boulders. The falls are produced as its namesake creek flows across a broad bedrock shelf through a box canyon-like narrows, then slides sideways and spreads out over a 50-60 foot breadth of cliff and plunges to the pool below. During periods of heavy flow, the creek will spread across the cliff rather evenly and create a very powerful fall, but later in the year as the volume of the creek drops the water segments and creates several distinct channels. During the wet season a tributary waterfall can be seen pouring into the gorge immediately above the top of Fly Creek Falls as well. The low elevation of the Fly Creek basin results in the volume of the creek varying greatly throughout the year. The creek drains from an area of approximately 15 square miles, and during the winter can achieve considerable volume, but as there are no lakes, springs, or sources or permanent snow in the area, the volume of the stream will drop as the seasonal precipitation subsides. The volume of water pouring over the falls may be reduced by as much as 90% between April an August. The Fly Creek basin is situated entirely on private timberland owned by Weyerhauser. Public recreation access is allowed, but only to those who hold an expensive recreation permit - both motorized ($250 annually) and non-motorized ($50 annually) permits are available, but they are only good for the specific land parcel indicated, meaning if you wish to recreate on other parcels of Weyerhauser land, you'd need another permit for that parcel of land. Having the motorized access permit for this area would certainly make access to this waterfall a lot easier. When we surveyed the falls in May of 2015, there appeared to be active logging operations along the road used to access the falls. We would suggest visiting on a weekend to avoid running across any such activity. Bringing a Mountain Bike to facilitate easier travel helps speed portions of the journey considerably, though there is lots of up and down where one will be pushing a bike uphill (in one particular area, very very steeply uphill), so one should weight the pros and cons before visiting.