Tatoosh Falls

Tatoosh Creek is a small tributary to the Paradise River which rises in Reflection Lakes and on the north side of the Tatoosh Range in Mount Rainier National Park. The creek runs for about 1.75 miles and then enters the Paradise River a short distance upstream from Madcap Falls. In the last quarter mile of the stream's run, the creek stairsteps 277 feet down the side of the Paradise River valley forming Tatoosh Falls. There are five distinct tiers to the falls, though the final three tiers are themselves very much stepped in nature as well. The first two drops - 28 and 14 feet respectively - are of a nearly vertical nature where the creek sluices through a narrow chute at the top of the broad bedrock exposure which produces the falls. The third tier starts immediately at the base of the second where the creek plunges onto a smooth rock and then slides down a ramp into a veil which flows sideways into a narrow crack in the rock for a total of 63 feet. At the top of this slide, when the creek is running full with the winter snowmelt, part of the stream diverts over a notch in the ramp and forms a second segment to the falls. The fourth tier is more difficult to see up close due to the steep terrain, but part of the 43 foot drop can be seen from the base of the falls. The final and largest section of the falls is a 129-foot tall, nearly 60-foot wide stepped cascade. Because of the limited size of Tatoosh Creek's drainage basin, the falls don't exhibit a very consistent behavior. While this part of Mount Rainier National Park receives heavy snow fall in the winter months, ensuring a strong flow in the late spring and early summer, once the snow has melted off for the season the volume of Tatoosh Creek drops quickly, and so does the impressiveness of the falls in following. Further, because of the usually heavy snow pack on the ground around the falls in the early summer, navigating to the falls can be a bit tricky at times. The window of time to view the falls in peak form will last for perhaps 6-8 weeks at most starting around the end of June.Tatoosh is a word common in many northwest Native American tribal tongues, all of which have a meaning along the lines of "thunderbird who shook the mountains with its flapping", or more vaguely, just "thunderbird". We speculate that the name was first applied to the mountains (the Tatoosh Range, and Tatoosh Peak), followed by Tatoosh Creek, and the falls were likely named after the creek. It is not known when and by whom the falls were discovered, but it seems likely that Henry Carter, blazer of the early Paradise Trail, may have been among the first westerners to see the falls. The falls appear to have first been documented on Eugene Ricksetter's 1907 map of the park.