Granite Gorge Falls

Granite Gorge Falls is found about 1/4 mile above the mouth of Thornton Creek just off the North Cascades Highway in Ross Lake National Recreation Area. The upper tiers of the falls are accessed by finding the Thornton Creek Road along Highway 20, about 3 1/4 miles west of the Newhalem General Store, and driving about 3/4 of a mile to the wooden bridge spanning Thornton Creek. To view the lower tiers of the falls, park alongside Highway 20 near the Thornton Creek bridge and bushwhack upstream along the west side of the creek. As of October 2013 there was some substantial slash cut refuse laying beneath the powerline clearing just above the highway, and getting through it was quite a task. The base of the falls are situated about 500 feet upstream from the highway.Thornton Creek heads in a series of gorgeous lakes perched overlooking the impressive Pickett Range in North Cascades National Park. The creek drops over 4200 feet in just over 3 miles to meet the Skagit River. In an area as rugged as the North Cascades, one would naturally assume there to be a waterfall of some sort in there. Granite Gorge Falls is the lowermost of what may be a long chain of waterfalls on Thornton Creek. The falls consist of a series of pothole plunges on either side of the bridge crossing the creek along the Thornton Creek Road. The upper series of falls drops 70 feet in four back-to-back steps in a narrow chute. The creek bends almost 90 degrees to the right and passes under the bridge, and then drops over four more tiers; the first two falling 30 and 62 feet into a gorgeous alcove rimmed with moss literally a foot thick, and then the final drops follow in steps of 35 and 22 feet to finish off the series. The falls are actually quite close to the North Cascades Highway, but due to the thick forest and the narrow winding shape of the canyon, there is no way to see it from the main road.Thornton Creek appears to have severely scoured its course out during the floods in 2003 and 2006, which resulted in the granite sluice along the falls being scoured and revealed such that its hard not to notice the bedrock, so the name has been suggested for the prominence of the gorge and the bedrock which it forms along.