Upper Hilt Creek Falls

From the North Cascades Highway in Rockport, head south on Highway 530 towards Darrington for 2-1/2 miles, then turn left onto Illabot Creek Road. This road climbs steadily uphill and can be moderately rough in places, but is generally passable by 2wd vehicles. Proceed for 7-1/2 miles to where the road crosses Hilt Creek for the second time (the first crossing is near a concrete low-water bar about 4 miles in). The upper tiers of the falls will be visible from the road looking upstream - scramble up the left side of the creek for easiest access and best photo opportunities.Upper Hilt Creek Falls is the least impressive, least interesting, and least accessible (discounting the fact that White Falls is posted) of the trio of large waterfalls on Hilt Creek. It's actually quite a two-faced waterfall, because while a portion of the falls is easy to get to and is rather scenic, the bulk of the falls is difficult to access, and even more problematic to achieve a clear view of. The falls consist of two distinct sections, bisected by Illabot Creek Road where it makes its second crossing of Hilt Creek. The upper section of the falls is a three-stepped cascading fall of 39 feet in all, with individual drops of 11, 21 and 7 feet respectively, which terminate in a pretty green pool. These three tiers of the falls can be easily seen from Illabot Creek Road (though a few trees prevent a totally clear view) and would be a fairly worthy waterfall in its own right if that was all there was to it. Below the road however, the creek pours into a narrow gorge by way of five more falls, each considerably larger than the upper three. The catch is that the gorge is so narrow, steep and heavily forested that it's nearly impossible to see the falls, and even more difficult to achieve a totally clear view of any given section. We were able to get a fairly clear shot of one tier, a 42-foot tall sliding cascade, but the other four drops were entirely obscured by trees or the shape of the canyon. At this point in its length, Hilt Creek is considerably smaller than what is typically seen at Hilt Creek Falls downstream. Because the drainage area upstream of Upper Hilt Creek Falls is narrow and very limited in scope, expect the volume of this waterfall to be reduced considerably once the winter snowpack has melted off - possibly reducing to just a trickle by late August.