Garfield Creek Falls

Exit Interstate 90 at Edgewick Road, east of North Bend, turn north and proceed about one-half mile and turn right onto Dorothy Lake Road (also signed as SE Middle Fork Road) which eventually turns into Middle Fork Road (NFR-56). Proceed 11-1/2 miles to the Taylor River bridge where the pavement ends, then bear right at the junction just past the bridge (the Taylor River Trailhead is straight ahead). From the Taylor River onward the road is in considerably rougher shape, and is frequently damaged by washouts in several places. High clearance is recommended. Garfield Creek crosses the road just past mile marker 14, and is marked by a large gravel wash which often damages the road and frequently functions as an impasse to vehicles without high clearance. The base of the falls are located about one-third of a mile upstream from the road. There is no trail.Garfield Creek is a low volume stream which drains one of the larger gullies on the south face of craggy Garfield Mountain in the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River valley. The creek flows down a steep, narrow gully filled with boulders for the majority of its descent, but near the valley floor it cascades down a long chain of slides and potholes carved into the granite bedrock. The entire series of falls has a linear run of at least 840 feet, and bends to a nearly 60 degree angle over its course, so the top of the falls cannot be seen from below and vice versa. When surveyed in January 2018 at least two-thirds of the falls were documented and measured, but because of how the creek has carved its narrow canyon into the bedrock not all of the drops in this run of the falls were observable. The ten individual tiers of the falls which were able to be measured on the initial survey total 280 feet in height. From the bottom and heading upstream drops of 21, 29, 45, 36, 20, 15, 25, 28, and 61 feet can be observed from various locations along the edge of the channel which the falls occupy. The five lowermost falls can be seen easily in tandem (for the most part), but the next four tiers upstream from there are mostly hidden from view without scrambling on the steep rock directly adjacent to the stream. The second and third tiers from the bottom of the falls both feature striking roostertail formations where the water explodes up into the air after striking small potholes or divots in the bedrock. The tenth drop (the 61 footer) can be easily accessed from the forest to the right side of the creek. There are at least four more tiers located further upstream which have not yet been surveyed. Heading further upstream from the 61-foot tier may require considerably steeper scrambling, and access to the remainder of the falls is not clear. The drainage basin which produces Garfield Creek is quite small, covering just 0.17 square miles (or about 110 acres) on the south face of Garfield Mountain. Because the terrain in this area is quite steep, precipitation which falls in the basin will run off quite quickly. Snow does gather in the deep shaded portions of the gully and remains well into spring in most years, but without sustained melt the creek will quickly be greatly reduced in volume. It very likely will run completely dry in the summer months.