Middle Stevens Creek Falls

Lower Stevens Creek Falls is found downstream of the Wonderland Trail where it crosses Stevens Creek at the lower end of Stevens Canyon in Mount Rainier National Park. Access to the falls is via the Stevens Creek Trail, which begins at the Box Canyon Picnic Area, about half of a mile west of the Box Canyon proper along the Stevens Canyon Road. The trail drops moderately steeply down to meet Stevens Creek at Middle Stevens Creek Falls in just over half of a mile. Look for a fenced spur trail which drops down to a viewpoint just as the creek comes into view.Middle Stevens Creek Falls is the smallest of a multitude of waterfalls along Stevens Creek as it descends through Stevens Canyon. Here Stevens Creek flows through a shallow trough carved into the bedrock, dropping over back-to-back plunges of about 5 and 10 feet respectively. Under normal circumstances this waterfall wouldn't actually qualify to be included in the database, however we opted to add it in for two reasons - 1) it is prominently marked on the USGS Mount Rainier East 7-1/2 quadrangle topographic map, and 2) a developed viewpoint overlooks the falls. As an additional note, the Mount Rainier East quadrangle incorrectly marks the Wonderland Trail as crossing Stevens Creek in the vicinity of this waterfall, where in reality it actually crosses about an eighth of a mile further downstream. This seems to have spurred some erroneous information being included in Greg Plumb's Waterfall Lover's Guide books, where the author lists a small uninteresting 10-foot cascade visible immediately below the footbridge as Lower Stevens Falls (the true lower falls on Stevens Creek is a quarter mile further downstream).