Warnicke Creek Falls....beyond the Black Rock gate 10/5/13

[Splintercat]

Dave told me about a small patch of old growth to the south near the town site of Valsetz,an old logging town. There is supposed to be a hiking trail looping in the patch of forest but sadly no waterfalls.

That's the Valley of the Giants trail - I've seen a couple trip reports on the forum over the year (I think JustPeachy posted one a couple years ago).

Tom

[cfm]

There is a whole section of old growth not far from Teal Falls, it's BLM and designated spotted owl habitat that will never be cut. There are no trails, but it is definitely worth exploring. It's section 6 , south of Teal Creek, west of the S Fork Teal creek drainage.

Also, just upstream from Camp Kilowan are three waterfalls, named by the Camp staff 30 ft falls, 60 ft falls and Slide falls.

[Splintercat]

Tim, is this Warnicke Falls?



Your mention of private timber holdings made me wonder where the Siuslaw NF boundary was (it's to the west), but also where BLM holdings are -- and it turns out that there's quite a bit of BLM land in there (shown in orange). Unfortunately, it looks like the falls is just outside of public ownership. But who knows, maybe the BLM will swap for it someday?

Tom

[Sore Feet]

Yep, that's it Tom. The fact that there's BLM land in there makes me wonder if there should be year round access (or at least more than just weekends in October) somewhere to the land just west of the falls?

[Splintercat]

I would think so, Bryan - forest roads on public lands aren't usually gated except for fire danger. The one on the north side is a numbered BLM road.

Tom

[trekkerdave]

The Coast Range west of Dallas contains many blocks of BLM properly. Often they are in “strips”, alternating between private and BLM property. None the less, public access is limited. Weyerhaeuser owns quite a bit of property in this area, and you will find their typically locked gates at pretty much every access point. As previously mentioned, Weyerhaeuser does open at least some of the gates during Western Oregon Hunting season (i.e., the month of October, sometimes the first weekend of November). I head up there every year for at least a couple of the open weekends.

However, they may very well be less obvious ways to get in other times of the year. In years past we’ve been able to draw limited hunt Elk tags for this area, in those cases Weyerhaeuser did share several gate combos with us. We were given special paperwork for our particular vehicles that specified we could be in the area. If you were to contact Weyerhaeuser, they may grant you some short term limited access.

I follow a couple different Kayak blogs, and have traded emails with one guy in particular that has kayaked the Little Luckiamute, Warnike, and Boulder creeks. All of these required access behind locked Weyerhaeuser gates. I never got a clear answer from him on how he accomplished this, but I assume he was given special access.

It really is too bad that area is so typically inaccessible. I grew in Dallas, Oregon, back in the days when the area was pretty much open, and this was one of my primary outdoor playgrounds.