Devil's Staircase Falls

March 21, 2020

The Devil's Staircase Wilderness was designated in March 2019. It is one of the wildest areas in Oregon. There are no trails. The wilderness includes beautiful forests and is named after the waterfall on waterfall on Wassen Creek. There are several videos online about finding the Devil's Staircase but typically there are no specific instructions for how to actually find it. This is an area that is best to stay wild and only for serious adventurers. 

Several months previously I had scouted out an option for where to start hiking to the waterfall from while doing a trail run on forest roads. 

It was about a 5 mile drive on forest roads to where I planned to start the hike. A good friend joined me. This is not a hike to try alone.

Bridge over the Smith River to forest road

We drove forest roads but weren't able to make it all the way as a tree had fallen on the road.

Signs of animals

Trillium

We hiked on the forest road until we reached the point where we would enter the forest.

There was a very faint path into the forest. There were also survey markers on trees.

We crossed a National Forest Service boundary.

There were some impressive trees.

The route I had planned mainly stuck to ridges and sometimes the hiking was actually fairly open.

At times, there was a slight view out of the forest.

Sometimes the brush was very thick and we had to slowly crawl and maneuver our way through it.

We surprisingly had good gps signal with our phones.  We ended up off my planned route and had to descend a very steep and loose hill with lots of down logs, not knowing if what we were stepping on was stable or not.

We crossed a small stream and there was a waterfall.

Sometimes I felt like I knew which direction I thought we should go, but then I would check my phone and it said to go a completely different direction. I trusted my phone. It was getting a little past the time we had planned to turn around if we didn't find the waterfall but I saw sunlight in the distance. If that wasn't Wassen Creek, we would turn around.

It was Wassen Creek!

But now we needed to find the waterfall. We followed the gps to the coordinates I had on my phone.

With excitement we found the waterfall!

Devil's Staircase Falls

There was a good flow of water going over the falls.

I walked up closer to get a different perspective.

We weren't able to stay long and soon began the steep climb back up. We decided to go the route I had planned initially.

We came to another view of Wassen Creek down below.

Someone had left a pink ribbon.

It was a steep climb and slow going through the dense vegetation.

We reached the ridge where we had previously hiked. The sun was shining brightly through the forest and there was a cool, refreshing breeze.

Soon the sun set and we began hiking by headlamp. There was a very faint trail which actually wasn't that difficult to follow in the dark.

We emerged from the forest and hiked the road back to the car.

Overall, the Devil's Staircase was one of the most challenging off-trail hikes I have done. We were very fortunate that our phones received gps signal. Without it we probably wouldn't have been able to find the waterfall. We packed in gear with us so that we could spend the night if necessary. My planned route was 4 miles roundtrip + the extra road walk, but both of us tracked at least 8 miles. It took us about 9 hours to complete.