Heart Lake Falls

Hearty Creek is the southernmost stream which drains off the east side of the Twin Sisters Mountain Massif southwest of Mount Baker. The stream is endowed at least 11 significant waterfalls along its roughly 3-mile length. Only the final falls along the creek – Bridal Veil Falls – carries a historically recognized name, any titles bestowed upon the other falls along the creek are purely colloquial in origin. We have opted to forgo naming most of them. There is no developed access to any of these waterfalls. Heart Lake Falls is the uppermost waterfall in the Hearty Creek drainage, spilling down the headwall immediately below Heart Lake in a steep cascading type fall dropping about 100 feet in total, split between two steep cascading drops of about 40 feet each, with the remainder of the height made up in talus cascades between the two tiers. Conclusive measurements of the height of the falls were not taken on our initial survey of the falls. Below the falls the creek sinks into the talus slope and runs beneath the surface for several hundred feet until it reaches the valley floor about 500 linear feet further downstream. Hearty Creek heads in Heart Lake, and unlike all of the other easterly-flowing streams on Twin Sisters Mountain, it does not originate in any permanent snow or ice. The drainage area upstream from this waterfall – essentially just the lake – covers an area of just one quarter of a square mile, and because of its small size and lack of permanent snow to continually feed into the creek, it’s very likely that the falls will dry out by mid to late summer once there is no longer any snow melt feeding into the lake.