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QuickTake:
Oregon winter at its best: Get outdoors with an easy day trip up Highway 58.
Looking for an easy winter trek with a big payoff? Even first-time snowshoers can handle the flat, 1-mile trail to Salt Creek Falls, the state’s second tallest waterfall. Was that too easy? Confident snowshoers can continue on a tougher 3-mile loop to an icy grotto with a bonus cascade, Diamond Creek Falls.
You’ll need to bring a Sno-Park permit, available for $5 at outdoor stores. And if you want to end the day with a soak in a hot springs pool, you’ll also need a Northwest Forest Pass, for another $5.
When you drive Highway 58 toward Willamette Pass in search of snow, the Salt Creek Falls Sno-Park is often the first place you’ll find enough of the white stuff to have some fun. It’s at milepost 57, a mile past the tunnel, and 5 miles before the top of the pass.
In summer you can drive a paved side road to a picnic area at the top of the 286-foot waterfall. In winter that road is an unplowed trail. So, park in the big plowed lot by a restroom and a sledding hill. The little hill is pretty tame, but if you’ve brought kids, you might spend half a day goofing around there anyway.
For the trek to Salt Creek Falls, carry your snowshoes back 0.1 mile on the plowed entrance road. Just before Highway 58, put on your snowshoes, tromp around a locked gate on the left, and follow a snowed-under road to the picnic area loop. At a kiosk at the far end of the loop, a 200-foot path leads to a railed viewpoint.
Salt Creek is actually a fair-sized river when it surprises itself by suddenly launching off a sheer, 286-foot basalt cliff. The startled stream thunders into a rocky bowl, blasts up as mist and freezes on the walls as gigantic icicles.
An interpretive sign at the viewpoint claims that mysterious swifts nest on the cliff behind the falls. Swifts are strange birds, it’s true, having evolved to be such expert fliers that they are no longer able to walk. Instead they use the claws on their decrepit feet to hang like bats while sleeping. In Eugene, migrating swifts famously overnight in industrial chimneys.
I’ve never seen swifts at Salt Creek Falls, but I have seen ouzels. The water ouzel, or dipper, is a dark robin-sized bird that flies underwater. It walks along the bottoms of icy mountain streams, flapping its wings to stay down while it hunts for insect larvae. Ouzels build moss nests on cliffs behind waterfalls. Not many predators bother them there.
From the railed viewpoint, most people continue up a flight of stone stairs to the right to a second viewpoint. But the loop trail actually goes the other way, to the left. Also railed, this path takes you past the brink of the waterfall and then follows the creek upstream 0.1 mile to a footbridge.
Here you face a decision. If you’ve seen enough, don’t cross the bridge. Simply continue upstream on a path that rejoins the snowed-under road back to your car.
If you’re going strong, you’re not afraid of heights, and this is not your first snow rodeo, cross the bridge. Follow blue diamonds 300 feet through the woods to a much smaller bridge.
Signs here mark the start of the 3-mile loop to Diamond Creek Falls. The signs suggest that you turn right, which is a good idea. If everyone does the loop counter-clockwise, you’ll run into fewer people.
The first mile of the loop traces the forested rim of a cliff overlooking Salt Creek’s valley. To the left you’ll glimpse the snowy white surface of Too Much Bear Lake. When I took my sister-in-law here in summer, she said, “Any amount of bear is too much.”
Another half-mile past Too Much Bear Lake will bring you to the signed junction of a side trail down to Diamond Creek Falls. This 0.2-mile route is rugged, but it leads to a spectacular misty grotto at the base of a 100-foot fan-shaped falls.
Even if you skip this rough detour, the main path will take you up to a nice railed viewpoint near the top of the waterfall.
Beyond Diamond Creek Falls the loop crosses a snowy road twice, parallels a railroad track with occasional noisy trains, and returns to the Salt Creek footbridge.
Did I promise you a hot springs soak after your trip? Drive 12 miles back towards Oakridge. Near milepost 45, park in a lot on the left marked McCredie Day Use Site, where a $5-per-car Northwest Forest Pass is required.
A second pool is on the opposite shore of Salt Creek’s raging whitewater, but don’t attempt to wade there. Instead drive Highway 58 half a mile east, turn right on Shady Gap Road, and keep right for 0.3 mile to a pullout with a 0.3-mile trail. Parking passes are not needed here.
Oregon’s second tallest waterfall is an icy treasure in winter. Follow it up with a hot soak in a wild hot springs pool. This is winter at its best.
