Douglas Creek Canyon South

#34 in Best Desert Hikes. This was another hike that the drive in to it alone was worthy. I mean if you can't get excited by an early morning drive down Moses Coulee there's something wrong with you. I am so envious of the people who call it home. Wow what an amazing place to have a ranch or farm. Magical. I turned off Palisades Rd. (uh aptly named eh?) onto Wagon Rd per the guidebook's instructions, bravely crossed a stream crossing fortunately only inches deep in my Civic and climbed up the steep road that gave you stunning views of the coulee below until it started to enter Douglas Creek Cyn. Soon the road sort of petered out at a berm which no normal vehicle would tackle, though ORVs and 4WDs can and do.

Ahead and below you see a series of waterfalls as Douglas Creek starts to drop to where it eventually flows out of its canyon onto the Coulee floor. I first wandered over to gaze way down below at the deepest part of the canyon, where Douglas Creek probably flows for most hours of daylight in perpetual shade. It's an obvious attraction to want to go down and explore but hooboy the canyon is so narrow down there it appears that one might be risking life and limb deadending in some precarious spot. Maybe some other lifetime. Anyway there are probably private property issues for anyone wanting to try entering the canyon where the creek exits it.

I also noticed that the old railroad entered the canyon much higher up near where the road does and you can scramble down from the ""parking area"" to walk a short portion of it as it enters the canyon through a short rock cut. Great views again of Moses Coulee and the towering imposing cliffs on the opposite side of the canyon. The railroad went through a tunnel right below the parking area but that is caved and only the top portion of the timbered opening is visible. You can peek into a black spooky void no doubt full of snakes! (<: So I crossed to the other side of where the tunnel used to be and dropped down onto the old grade and headed north towards the series of falls. Very picturesque, and unfortunately a bit littered by the party crowd. But a beautiful spot nonetheless. Too bad for me that the bright conditions weren't very conducive for slow-speed silky smooth waterfall pictures, these falls are perfect for that, very scenic.

So I walked on until within a half mile the road/trail reaches a ford which was a dry-footed one with my waterproof boots. Just shallow enough in the right spots. It's a nice shady area too. There are remains, concrete footings, of a railroad trestle that spanned the creek not too further on. There is actually little left of the railroad on these Douglas Creek trails, even though quite surprisingly to me it last ran in the 1980s. You would never have guessed that recently. There's a few spikes, ties and odd pieces here and there mostly on the Douglas Crk Cyn North trail. Almost everything else save the grade has been removed.

The creek as you head north is always on your left, after the ford the grade is a bit above and away from the creek. I saw at least one beaver pond. The creek area is a narrow zone of lush growth- many times you can barely see the water. This is the most open area of the three Douglas Crk Cyn trails, tall hills on either side of you, the long Badger Mtn on your left. After a longish stretch I came upon Pegg Canyon (1.5 miles into the hike), with a little stream or spring flowing out of it across the road. The guidebook says you can enter it .5 miles until the end of public land but I couldn't go much further than several hundred feet before the tall brush got too thick. This was my turnaround point- another mile or so would have gotten me to the start of the Badger Mtn hike (#35).

As I headed back I came upon a 2' long snake stretched across the grade. Immediately I whipped out the camera and thought ""cool, rattler!"". It posed for me and then slowly slithered back the other way it had been headed into the bush. I just had to confirm it was a rattler so I poked at its tail with my hiking pole and it coiled up, shook its tail and made a rattling sound. Hey I was convinced I wasn't going to ask for ID. After I got back home I did further research and found out it was a bull or gopher snake- extremely common across the U.S. in fact- and they mimic the rattlesnake (in our case the Northern Pacific rattlesnake) by ""rattling"" their tail and making a rattling sound using an organ in their head. Clever fellow- it was that rattling sound that sorta had me convinced for a bit. No pun intended.

After that I was more alert but no more snake encounters. Shortly before the ford there was a single ATV cycle parked alongside the grade but no rider in sight. When I reached the falls again I took more pics and the guy passed me by on an upper road and I saw that he had parked next to me with a truck and trailer. So as I got to my car he was loading his cycle and I found out he worked for Douglas County checking creekflow gauges. Nice fellow, said he's worked for the county doing that and other jobs for several decades and he got tired of all the hiking miles involved on perfectly good ATV-type roads doing his job so he got himself one. Can't say I blame him! He told me a little about the railroad history. He also said he had lived in both Douglas and Grant Cos. all his life and only fairly recently had he even known much about Douglas Canyon and the stunning scenery within. Maybe having the railroad run through it kept folks away, not to mention a lot of central WA is still ""undiscovered country""- much to our hiking benefit and enjoyment.