Memaloose Creek
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| | Raps:4, max ↨110ft
Red Tape:No permit required Shuttle:Optional 1 mi | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Condition Reports: | 12 Oct 2024
"This was a fantastic October canyon with quite nice flow for this time of year — better than we expected! We combined Memaloose and South Fork Clack |
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| Best season: | Aug-Oct
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45.2000, -122.2254
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Waterflow
Introduction[edit]
Closure Info: This creek was overrun by the Riverside Fire (major wildfire) in Sept 2020 and is now open. Be mindful when entering a severely burned forest before attempting.
Memaloose is best combined with South Fork Clackamas River.
Tunnel's history: https://wyeastblog.org/2010/02/13/proposal-south-fork-water-works-trail/
Approach[edit]
The attached map shows the combined approach, descent and exit of Memaloose + South Fork Clackamas River.
Note that Road 45 is gated after the bridge. Expect to road walk up to the hiking approach. (Apparently very commonly done by waterfall aficionados.) The last part of the hiking trail is a steep drop down dirt slopes with rope handlines. It drops you into the creek upstream of the old tunnel approach.
Another approach is to cross the Clackamas River and walk up the old road grade to Memaloose. Cross S Fork Clackamas and walk up Memaloose, the creek is relatively clear of debris to an old 10 feet tall concrete foundation. Exit at the foundation to the old road grade, trail, and tunnels to access R1. Expect a rough, steep trail.
Descent[edit]
Beta October 2023. Danger! There is a giant logjam forming above R1. The main log holding back the majority of the logs is very rotten an bending. This thing could go at anytime! I doubt it will still be there in 2024. When this releases it will potentially change the rappels below. We double rope rappelled 10 feet from the logjam rather than downclimbing it.
R1: 85' (60' drop from big log 25' back) into deep pool. A good rappel line is DCR side in the falls in moderate flow. DCL flow looks a little spicy.
R2: 30' from 2 bolt anchor DCL to get down the chute to R3. The anchor and chute are clear of logs. Do not install webbing on the bolts. Lots of logs move through here. Set your block against the glue in bolt and run your rappel line through the lower inline bolt/quick link.
NOTE: If the water is at high flow, you may consider setting up a rebelay from R2 to R3 to keep from getting washed over the falls at R3. Plan on a ~60 foot rappel line to get you to R3.
R3: 110' from 2 bolt anchor DCL well out of the flow. Fighting the rappel line it is possible to get in the flow and it isn't as bad as it looks, probably need 150' to run the flow. Don't leave webbing here as this anchor is submerged in the spring. Set your block against the glue in bolt and run your rappel line through the lower inline bolt/quick link.
There’s a 20’ slide at the bottom of R3. Rappel to the final ledge, get off rope and scramble to the waterfall. Slide 20’ straight through the flow into the pool below :)
The creek is somehow clear of old logjams and its an easy creak walk to the confluence. Climb up beside the old retaining wall from the old bridge (currently has a pipe crossing the river) to easily access the trail to South Fork Clackamas.
There are 2 great low angle chute slides in the river just above the tree ghost anchor location of R4.
R4 (Same as R4 for South Fork of the Clackamas River): 60 foot waterfall. Ghost from tree DCL 50 feet back. You will drop beside and under a log for a great rap line beside the falls. No anchors are installed here probably because this is a popular swimming area in the summer.
Please note that information is likely to change regularly over the next few years as the effects of the Riverside Fire continue to evolve.
Exit[edit]
Continue down canyon from the last rappel until you find a place to scramble up the bank DCL to the old access road/trail. Follow trail out to the Clackamas River and swim across to the rocky bar on river right at the big bend.
At the Clackamas River, its an easy swim/float at low to moderate river levels to the rocky bend just downstream and the parking.
Red tape[edit]
Trip reports and media[edit]
Background[edit]
Matt Moore from www.deserthighlights.com pioneered the descent of these canyons. Original tracks and waypoints provided by Evan Topinka.
Beta sites[edit]
Trip reports and media[edit]
Background[edit]
In 1913, the young cities of Oregon City and West Linn suffered a serious outbreak of typhoid from an increasingly polluted Willamette River, their sole source of water at the time. The incident spurred Oregon City’s leaders to appoint a “Pure Mountain Water League” and directed it to locate a safer source of drinking water.
The League settled on the pristine South Fork of the Clackamas River in the Cascade foothills. The City of West Linn signed on with Oregon City, offering to pay for one third of the cost of a new pipeline to bring the South Fork water to the two cities. A South Fork Water Board was created to carry out this ambitious project.
By the fall of 1915, the new water district had managed to lay twenty-six miles of 18” pipe from a site at the confluence of Memaloose Creek and the South Fork Clackamas all the way to Oregon City and West Linn. The new pipeline began to carry municipal water on October 7, 1915.
In 1939 the South Fork Water Board expanded the system with the help of one of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal recovery programs, the Works Project Administration. This project extended a 24” pipeline upstream from the Memaloose Creek intake to a point upstream, above the 120-foot main falls on the South Fork. This project involved carving a series of three dramatic tunnels and a cantilevered pipeline through solid basalt cliffs.
The new intake improved water pressure downstream, and this system continued to serve as the water supply for the two cities until a new filtration plant was constructed on the lower Clackamas River, in 1958. Both systems were used until 1985, when the South Fork pipeline was decommissioned. Since then, the network of roads, tunnels, plank walkways, log bridges and old pipeline has slowly been fading into the green rainforest of the South Fork canyon.
The story might have ended there, except for the series of spectacular series of waterfalls along the South Fork and Memaloose Creek. By the late 1990s, some of the region’s more adventurous kayakers had scouted both streams, and in the early 2000s, had documented the first known descent of the South Fork by kayak.
