The Rock Bridge in the Wilderness

Time and time again I have heard this idea that rural communities in beautiful areas can base their economy on tourism and relying on area’s natural beauty to attract tourists who will spend money. It should be obvious that, in order to have an attraction, you have to attract people. Certain land use designations make access to these lands difficult, thus making it more difficult to attract people. Who would want to spend a lot of time and money to go somewhere and then not be able to see the main attractions?

Prohibition of commercial or mechanized development on federal lands designated as Wilderness under the Wilderness Act, naturally limits access to these lands. I have often heard local woods in or near heavily developed areas where one can take a leisurely stroll on numerous trails referred to as wilderness simply because the area is not developed. This is a far cry from many of the Wilderness areas on federal lands in the North Cascades where there are often no trails and one has to battle thick brush full of biting, stinging insects-mosquitoes, black flies, yellowjackets and nameless biting bugs; sweeping water currents and slick rocks; where every step is hard work and a calculation and a decision and you are only as good and as safe as your last decision, because, if you hurt yourself, you will probably never be found. How many people in the world do you think are up for that kind of experience, even if they are physically capable of it?

There are some Wilderness areas that are fairly easy to access but even these limit the number of people who can use them and, in many Wilderness areas, access is very limited to the majority of people. So, if you want to attract tourists to an area in order to build an economy, you should probably be careful about how much land in that area you designate as federal Wilderness because it keeps people out. This is well known by land managers. I am not against Wilderness designation of federal lands but we have lands designated as such that are interconnected and run along nearly the whole length of the North Cascades. We also have rural communities in these areas that suffer from chronic economic depression. Tourism as an industry doesn’t create a lot of well paying jobs. I recently heard the U.S. Secretary of Labor refer to tourism jobs as “low quality jobs”. But they are jobs nonetheless and it stands to reason that if you are trying to make it with a marginal industry like tourism, you need to attract as many people as possible.

What follows is a story of a spectacular place that I have been to in North Cascades National Park that would probably be a big attraction if access was fairly easy. I know of a similar place, mentioned in the story, with very easy access that draws a lot of people. The place described below doesn’t draw anyone however, because it is in a Wilderness designated area and there is no trail to it and a lot of very difficult, dangerous terrain to cross in order to get to it. From evidence I saw at the site, I know at least one other person had been there before me but, in modern history, I would guess that only a handful of people have ever been there, so very few people probably even know it exists. Some would argue that it is better that way because it won’t get trashed. I am not in complete disagreement with that sentiment and so I have kept my descriptions anonymous. But it is also a prime example why wilderness designated lands do not promote or enhance tourism. I have done many trips not unlike the one described below and I am sure there are a lot of other quite amazing things out there unknown to myself and most, if not all, people. In my 25 years or so of exploring out of the way places in the North Cascades far from designated trails and popular climbing and fishing routes, I have encountered other people only once. 

This post is a long one for which I apologize. But I felt I had to describe, blow by blow, the effort it took to access this area in order to try to recreate this experience for the reader. With my usual vignettes and asides added in, I couldn’t find a way to create a shorter version. If you doubt what I have said previously about Wilderness and tourism, please read on.

The first time I went to the Rock Bridge it took me a little more than a day, about 12 miles by trail including a miserable slog up, then back down the nose of a ridge. As I started down off the ridge, I could almost see my destination near the head of a small side valley. The sight gave me a tinge of butterflies and nausea. It was so steep! It looked like it would be impossible to get up into that valley, let alone maneuver its precipitous sides. Rugged crags looming over the head of the side valley did little to reassure me. Logic told me this was inanimate rock, neither good nor evil and completely indifferent to human concerns, but superstitions playing in my mind saw austere, even malevolent giants in the sharp, bare rock jutting into the summer sky. My only consolation was that the USGS 7.5 minute quad indicated that the ground slope in that valley should be gentle enough for me to travel through it.

I had passed this way several times before in previous years on my way to other destinations and had gazed up that side valley with a vague uneasiness, knowing that, at some point, I would need to do a trip or two up there. The uneasiness had been easy to shrug off to some vague future date on those previous trips but not this time. I had to face my fears head on now.

I followed the trail a little beyond the mouth of the side valley before leaving it, crossing the stream occupying the main valley and starting up the steep side valley. The stream crossing in the main valley was much easier than I had expected as the stream was spread out over a large alluvial deposit and was very shallow, only knee deep at most where I had expected it to be at least thigh deep. The going was good on the other side of the main valley. The lower slopes were covered with big timber and the thick green carpet of moss underneath was broken up here and there with a few blown out stream channels and vine maple patches but there were no major obstacles.

As started up the side valley, the going quickly got tougher. I almost immediately hit a small, very steep bedrock ravine occupied by a tiny stream. Uphill to my left the ravine ended at some vertical cliffs. Downhill to my right seemed to be the most likely route to cross the ravine in a small band where the ground sloped more gently above what looked like a steep drop off into the larger stream roaring below. It took several attempts to find a safe crossing but I finally scrambled across in one piece with a little assistance from some tag alders which provided convenient handholds. Before continuing on, I took some mental notes so I could find this spot on my way back.

On the other side of the ravine I was in timber again but the slope was much steeper and I had to be very cautious with my footing. Several windfalls on these steep slopes made travel more difficult. In about a quarter of a mile the hill slope became more gentle and eventually I reached a small timbered flat. Just above this flat, on my left, was an opening created by a large rock slide overgrown with vine maple. Skirting below the slide, I started up a small ridge leading to another opening in the timber ahead.

Large openings in the forest below timberline usually bolster my spirits when I first glimpse them because they often provide the means to better see the route ahead. At the same time, and, more often than not, these openings are usually filled with brush which greatly lessens their appeal. Just before I reached the opening, I dropped my pack and scouted ahead. At the edge of the timber, I faced a wall of vine maple growing on a large debris cone created by centuries of avalanches and land slides. My heart sank. The area was passable but it would take a lot of effort and sweat to get through.

After a good rest back at my pack, I continued on. Exiting the timber, I started up a small, dry stream course running along the edge of the slide. This stream course was steep but free of brush for quite some distance; I could gain a hundred feet or so before I would have to deal with the brush. My strategy was to try to get as high as I could on the slide before trying to cross it. The vine maples in the slide were lying down the hill, bent by the weight of deep winter snows and avalanches. This created a grain that would tend to push me downhill as I tried to cross. So the higher I got on the slide before I tried crossing the easier I could cross and still maintain a decent elevation. And, if I was lucky, the brush might peter out higher up, which is often the case, because the upper parts of slides are often more active and the woody perennial shrubs that make such a nasty thatch of brush have a hard time getting established where debris is deposited every year or sometimes several times a year. Of course, being more active, these areas also present hazards from frequent rock falls but I felt it was well worth the risk to avoid the brushy lower slopes.

The dry stream course became unnavigable at some cliffs before the brush petered out so I picked a likely spot, set my jaw and dove into the brush. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that what I had thought to be a solid wall of brush turned out to only be about ten feet wide. On the other side of this narrow band of brush was an easily traversable slope of talus and soil littered with wood. At the far edge of this open spot there was another thicket of vine maple which proved to be no wider than the first I had encountered.

My guess that travel might be easier towards the top of the debris cone had been right. The bottom of the slope was a nearly solid thicket of vine maples while nearer to the top where the vegetation was impacted much more frequently by slides there was a lot more bare ground and only the occasional finger of brush.

So I was able to cross the slide with relative ease mostly on bare, fairly solid ground and I only had to work through a thin wall of brush every fifty feet or so. The open areas between these thickets were created by deposits of rock ranging in size from fine gravel to boulders that had sloughed off the cliffs above. Over the last hundred years or so, many slides of varying size, large and small, had transported these materials down several narrow bedrock chutes to be deposited in an area  about a quarter mile long on the valley wall. These most recent slides were part of the ongoing building of the much larger debris cone. The great bulk of the debris cone lower down near the stream was now buried under the newer slides and brush. It was several hundred feet deep and had undoubtedly taken many centuries, if not millennia, to build. 

I was stopped by impassable cliffs at the upstream edge of the debris cone but I had a way past. A small stream here had cut deeply into the debris deposits creating a large gulch that extended down into the large creek a hundred feet below. The gulch was larger than one would have expected for the size of the stream occupying it. This was probably due to a number of factors. The material of the debris cone was loose and easily erodible and the small stream entered the main stream at the point where the main stream made a hard bend. So, at flood stage, thousands of gallons of water in the large creek would be slamming full force into the toe, or bottom edge, of the debris cone with massive amounts of erosional energy. As material at the bottom of the slope was swept away more material would fall in from above to be swept away as well. This process of material continually falling into a stream, in this case the large creek, and being washed or transported away can extend for some distance up hill slopes in highly erosional areas where soils are not very stable. This effect would be amplified by the presence of the small stream at the sharp bend in the main creek which would saturate and further destabilize the soil as well as wash it down into the main creek. And so it was with this little stream and its oversized gulch.

The gulch was eroded ten feet through the deposits of the debris cone along the course of the small stream from the point where it issued from a crack in the bedrock cliffs above. This provided a brush free path I could descend to get below the cliffs blocking my route but it also presented some problems. The first was getting into the gulch and the second was getting to the bottom in one piece. The sides of the gulch were steep and made up of an unstable mixture of soil, sand, gravel and small cobbles mixed in with a few boulders big enough to crush a hand or foot or break a leg. 

I carefully made my way into the gulch and then slowly worked down it, nervous the whole way. Footing was treacherous. Sometimes I would take a step and it would seem solid underfoot but, when I applied my full weight, everything underneath would shift and slide downhill sometimes dragging the material above with it. This required some strategic thinking. I tried to pick routes that avoided passing below larger boulders perched precariously on piles of loose gravel. Where this was not possible, I at least tried not to linger below such boulders though I still needed to place my feet with great care so as not to bring a big chunk of the slope down on top of myself with a careless step. The biggest boulders were probably about 3 feet in diameter, small enough that I could also place my hand on them and push myself off and away if they started to slide, kind of like a stiff arm to avoid being tackled on the football field, only here the strategy was to avoid being crushed, trapped or buried.

Reaching the main stream channel, I worked my way up the edge of the stream. The rocks were slick but going was pretty good as the rocks between the brush and the stream had been stripped bare by the relatively minor bankfull floods that occur in our streams several times a year. Occasionally I had to wade the edge of the stream to get past a big boulder or a vagrant clump of vine maple or tag alder fallen in from an undercut bank.

About fifty yards above where I had entered the main channel I hit an impasse. The stream here described a backward “S”. The downstream curve of this “S” was the hard stream bend where I had followed the gulch down off the debris fan. The upstream curve flowed around a pile of very large boulders either left behind by the last glacier to sit in this spot or calved from the nearby cliffs. These boulders were probably up to ten feet in diameter and I had reached a point just shy of the inside of the upper curve of the “S” where I was faced with a boulder too sheer and too tall to climb over. Crossing the stream was out of the question. The stream had a steep gradient and was fast flowing and it was a turbid muddy brown from glacial flour. Flowing as it did between those boulders the pools it had scoured were probably pretty deep, over my head I guessed. Not that I could tell though. I could only see a scant few inches into the opaque water. Even if I had been able to see where to walk, the frigid current was strong enough to knock me off my feet and sweep me away like a dry twig.

My only choice to go forward was a nearly impenetrable wall of brush on my left. After a few minutes of deliberation, I resigned myself, set my jaw and dove into the brush. Wormed in is probably a more accurate description. The brush was a nasty mass of vine maple, tag alder, salmonberry and devils’ club and, for a nice change of pace, underneath these larger plants, small, thorny black swamp gooseberry was abundant. My dad used to call these thorny type plants “handy bushes” as a kind of play on words because they are always “handy” when you need something to grab onto, at which point they fill your hand with stickers. And I needed to grab onto something with almost every step I took in order force myself through the thicket. I am sure there were many innocuous forbs like foamflower, trillium and columbine growing in that green tangle of misery but I honestly don't remember.

I forced my way through fifteen or twenty feet of scratching, stabbing brush before I encountered a gap between two boulders. This gap was brush free and just big enough to fit my pack through with a little wiggling and twisting. At the top of the gap, I had to force my way through a thicket of thorny salmonberry to get back into the sunlight. The creek was maybe ten or twenty feet away and I was over halfway through cutting across the upper curve of the backward “S” in the stream. I was thankful for the long sleeved shirt and long pants, both made of heavy denim and worn for just such situations as this. My hands and forearms were red and crisscrossed with a multitude of scratches and a dozen or so thorns in my hands would be festering over the coming days but I was in pretty good shape overall.

Standing at the top of the gap in the boulders I was at the edge of a pile of smaller rock perched on top of the pile of big boulders. This smaller rock created a fairly flat surface for walking on and the brush growing here was stunted and would offer no resistance to me as I moved through it. I momentarily experienced a warm, fuzzy feeling upon seeing this stretch of easy walking. I must say that the two or three steps it took to get across that spot on my way back into the thick welter beyond were some of the most satisfying of my life.

As I stepped back into the thick brush, I pushed down several dead tag alders. One of them broke and instantaneously whipped up and smashed me on my left ear hard enough that I saw stars. I paused for a minute or two, eyes watering and kind of stunned by the pain. As the pain began to fade, my ear began to feel really warm. Just from blood rushing to it I hoped. I put my hand to it and it was warm and slippery. I looked at my fingers knowing they would be red with blood but I had to look anyway just to be sure. I was bleeding all right. I gingerly felt around the ear again. It seemed like it was still firmly attached though I did not pull on it too hard. It didn’t seem like I was hurt too badly but I didn’t have a mirror or any available still water so I could look at myself. I would like to say that I didn’t give a thought to turning back but I probably did. I distinctly remember reasoning that I was far enough in that if I needed stitches for cosmetic reasons, it would probably take too long for me to get out for them to do any good anyway. With any luck I would have a scar to that would be interesting to talk about but not too disfiguring. So I decided that I might as well keep going. 

I worked my way to the edge of the creek and, with some difficulty, I lowered myself over the large rocks on the upstream side of the boulder pile. This area, just upstream of the backward ”S”, had a lower gradient than below but it was still too treacherous to wade in the main current. Several hundred yards ahead on my side of the creek a nice patch of big, dark evergreens beckoned. I worked my way up the margin of the stream fighting boulders and brush all the way to the timber. When I finally reached it, I saw that, not surprisingly, it was not going to be easy.

The timber, so inviting from below, was perched atop a vertical cut bank about ten feet high at the creek’s edge. The best place to get back out of the creek was in an avalanche track at the downstream edge of the timber and this was no bargain. Within the previous ten years, an avalanche here had flattened a thick stand of sapling evergreens. This formed row upon row of long sharp stakes pointed straight down the 45 degree hill slope. These rows of flattened saplings reminded me of breastworks set up repel attackers in the paintings and drawings of various battles throughout history. These small trees were no more than six inches at the base and had probably grown in after another large avalanche had wiped out the previous stand of trees. Though the saplings had been flattened, not many were killed or uprooted. So the side limbs of the trees that were still living had begun to grow out in their quest for sunlight from their awkward positions, some grew horizontally and some vertically. This formed a mesh of thick limbs that would be nearly impossible to push through. And, in order to get up into that mass of pitchy bark and needles, I still had to get up the bank, only four or five feet here, not ten, but a challenge nonetheless. Somehow I wormed my way up through the flattened saplings and into an old rock slide.

           

By this point, I had been on the go for nine or ten hours and was pretty tired. The going in the old rock slide was a little easier though the rocks were of a size that was difficult to get through. They were big enough to require some climbing and scrambling here and there and thick growth of moss made footing tenuous. Every time I put my foot down here I could not be sure if it would encounter solid rock underneath or go crashing through a flimsy moss bridge. And, of course, I had to deal with the occasional vine maple or scrubby tree which always seemed to grow in places where they would be most difficult to get around.

           

Finally I reached the bigger timber. When I first spotted it, it had looked so inviting but in the time it took to actually reach it, it had seemed more and more like it was mocking me. The going here was easier though it was no picnic in some spots. The ground was all forest duff which made footing better. The forested area extended for some distance upstream, maybe half a mile or more. This patch of timber was also in an area influenced by avalanches but the last slides here were much older than in the area I had just come through.

           

The forest was an interesting mosaic of differently aged stands of trees established in the wakes of past avalanches. In areas where slides had come through in the last 20 to 30 years, the stand was thick and nothing grew in the heavily shaded understory. These areas were the most difficult to move through. The trees were tightly spaced and bristled with limbs nearly to the ground. These limbs and twigs were dead, dry and super hard because they had grown very slowly and their tightly spaced annual rings formed a very dense wood. Limbs of neighboring trees intertwined to form walls of twigs that resisted me and poked and tore incessantly at my eyes, clothes and pack. While passing through one of these walls on the way out, a twig actually poked a hole in my soft plastic water jug.

           

Other stands of trees within this strip of timber were older and had reached the point where their lower limbs were completely gone and they had begun to self-thin a bit. Scattered throughout the stands of smaller trees, in patches or singly, were large trees three to five feet in diameter. These venerable old trees had somehow survived hundreds of years of avalanches and some bore the scars of many a close call. If those trees could only talk, I’m sure they would have many harrowing tales to tell. Travel through the patches of big old trees was pretty good, a little brushy at times and a few large logs to get over or around but it wasn’t bad.

           

In spots where the big trees had fallen over or been knocked down by avalanches recently enough to have a stand of thick brushy trees growing around them it could be pretty miserable. I not only had to clamber over the big logs which were sometimes as high as my chest, I had to, at the same time, push through the poking, clawing limbs of the small trees.

           

I finally reached an open slide track at the upstream end of the forest strip. This slide track was brushy in spots but it was relatively flat with some areas that were surprisingly free of any kind of springy, tangling brush. It would be quite a break from most of the avalanche tracks that I had come through that day.

           

By the time I reached the upstream edge of the timber, I was at the point of exhaustion. My legs and shoulders ached and my back was tired. Even my jaw was tired from constantly setting it and gritting my teeth.  I didn’t want to push any farther that day so I made a rather poor camp between two large old logs in a stand of small brushy timber at the edge of the slide track. I could work down a nearby cut bank to the edge of the creek for water. It was far from an ideal camp but it was workable, and, since I didn’t know what lay ahead in the way of camping spots, probably the best I could do within the range of my strength that day.

           

The next day the sky was overcast with low clouds threatening rain. I had planned on going several more miles up the creek that day but it looked like my trip would be cut short. The country ahead was similar to what I had just come through and I had made it my policy some years earlier not to invest a great deal of time and effort in trips where I was more likely than not to end up soaking wet and tired with nothing to look at but the drifting mists of a fog bank. I didn’t need to make myself miserable in order to get a fog bank experience when I could see all the fog I wanted to from any number of roads while sitting in a nice dry car. It kind of hurt to lose all of the effort of the previous day but it would be better that than investing another day like it, except a lot wetter, just to contemplate the inside of a cloud instead of the scenery.

           

To try to salvage something from the trip, I decided to scout the route ahead a little way so I could better plan for the next time I came through. This is how so many times, despite my policy, I end up tired, beat up and wet contemplating a fog bank. It starts out innocently enough but then I get the urge to see what is around that next corner just upstream then the next corner, then the next. Then it starts to rain and …oh what the hell, I’m already wet. Might as well keep going.

           

That didn’t happen this time though.  I started out through the avalanche track with a light pack. The tag alders weren’t too thick and there were large open areas with patches of salmonberry and bracken fern. The bracken fern was about chest high and it resisted my movements a little bit. It grew so thickly that I couldn’t see where I was placing my feet so I stumbled every now and then but all these were minor concerns. Compared to the previous day, it was a pleasure to walk through those bracken fern thickets and I would gladly walk through hundreds of yards of them to get around one hundred yards of vine maples or tag alders.

There was small fringe of tag alders with a small spring running through them at the upstream edge of the avalanche track. Beyond the tag alders was a nice open stand of evergreen timber. I was vaguely disappointed. If I had pushed on for only a few hundred more yards, I could have camped in the nice open timber with a source of clear sweet water nearby. But I couldn’t have known this beforehand and could have just as easily ended up in a huge brush patch with no place to camp at all. This was exactly the reason I was scouting ahead. The timber was a real traveler’s paradise. The trees were well spaced and the canopy was fairly closed so there was very little underbrush.

           

Within a quarter of a mile of entering the timber I found the Rock Bridge. The hill slope started to rise fairly quickly in the timber. As I traveled through the trees and around small rock outcrops the roar of the creek became louder as its gradient increased. Then I became aware of a deep muffled booming superimposed over the sound of the creek. As I traveled up the hill, its slope increased until it reached about a 45 degree angle. There was now a slight rise between me and the creek so I couldn’t see it but I could tell that its channel had become much more narrow. The booming sound was coming from a waterfall just out of sight over the slight rise. Curious, I cut toward the creek and up and over the rise.

           

I can’t express in words my feelings when I laid eyes on that waterfall. My heart, already beating fast from my exertions in coming up the hill, picked up its pace and my breathing became even faster. I’m sure some obscenity made its way through my mind, not the kind uttered in blasphemy or disrespect, but the kind born of pure awe and amazement.

           

The stream which was probably 30 to 50 feet wide ordinarily now flowed through a slot it had cut deep in the bedrock. This slot was probably less than ten feet wide in many places. The creek fell through this slot for maybe one hundred feet before dropping into a giant crack in the bedrock and falling another hundred feet or so. This great crack was at most 20 feet wide and was probably less. It split the solid bedrock from where I stood at the waterfall several hundred feet to the bedrock’s downstream edge. The crack was so deep and narrow that the stream was not visible from where I stood, only a few feet from its edge. It seemed like the bedrock wall on the other side of the crack was close enough that it would be possible to touch it with a long stick or pole. Though the rock where I stood looked solid enough, I didn’t stray too close to the edge, not trusting that it would not crumble under my feet and send me plummeting into the abyss.

           

What created this great crack I do not know but an earthquake would top my list of possibilities. It looked like the work of some sudden, catastrophic event. The top of the crack on my side of the stream had a very sharp edge as if it had been suddenly broken rather than eroded slowly by water. Water would have left a rounded edge. Both sides of the crack dropped vertically or nearly so into the stream.

           

But what made this particular part of the stream so special was not the great crack. Nor was it the slot carved deep into the bedrock above the great crack. I know of several streams and waterfalls that are deeply incised in bedrock in a similar manner. Ladder Creek Falls in Newhalem is one example that readily comes to mind. And split rock, even a huge outcrop of bedrock, is not uncommon. What made this place special is that, about where the creek poured from the slot into the great crack, a rock bridge spanned the narrow channel.               

           

When I say bridge, I don’t mean it in the sense of a road or trail bridge with a broad horizontal surface for traveling on. While it was a single unbroken piece of rock bridging the water-worn slot, its smooth, rounded horizontal surface, which was hard to see, was very narrow, probably only 2 or 3 feet wide while its vertical surface extended 5 or 6 feet from top to bottom. The whole thing spanned barely 10 feet, so it was definitely no Bridge of the Gods which once spanned the Columbia River at the Dalles. The collapse of the Bridge of the Gods in pre European contact times gave birth to many wonderful stories among the peoples who lived around it at the time (the collapsed rock from this great bridge formed the Dalles, where the Columbia cascades. The entire Cascade Mountain range was named by Lewis and Clark for these cascades). Now, I am sure that this was not the only rock bridge in existence in the Pacific Northwest and certainly not in the world. Nevertheless, it was the only naturally occurring rock bridge that I had ever seen and I had never heard of anything like it in this part of the world other than the Bridge of the Gods. And its setting was certainly impressive.

           

From where I stood, I was looking slightly up at the rock bridge. The vertical side of the bridge facing me was sheltered from the stream during floods and it was interesting to see on it a heavy growth of moss through which grew goatsbeard and several species of saxifrage. I was familiar with these plants in less dramatic settings on the forest floor and they seemed almost out of place clinging tenaciously to the rock bridge, above the yawning chasm.

           

The power of the waterfall was frightening. I was deafened by the sound of thousands of gallons of water thundering into the misty void at my feet with enough force to make the ground shake, or so it seemed. The roiling water disappeared into the great crack and did not reappear for hundreds of feet downstream. When it finally came back into view it was flowing smoothly across the tailout of the big pool that I couldn’t see but knew was just below me in the bottom of the great crack.

           

My mind sometimes does funny things. Though I wouldn't try to cross that bridge in a million years, my mind, beyond my control, wondered what it would be like to try walk across it. The thought made me shudder often, imagining slipping off the water rounded, algae slickened rock to be crushed under tons of water in the chasm below. That being said, I know a few people who, at least in their younger years, would have probably tried to cross that rock bridge on a lark (in case you were wondering, yes, the people I know who might try such a feat are all male).

           

I don’t know what phenomenon created the rock bridge but I would speculate that it had its origins in a pothole. Potholes are created in the bedrock of a streambed where water swirls in a circular pattern. Rocks ranging in size from sand to boulders can be caught or entrained in these currents and begin to erode a round hole into the bedrock. If the current shifts away or the main erosive rock finally erodes away it leaves behind a hole shaped like a cooking pot.

           

On an interesting side note, I have heard that several hundred years ago, before the science of geology existed, people in Scandinavia called these things witches cauldrons. No one understood how these big round holes in solid rock came to exist with no apparent cause and assumed that they must be the result of supernatural forces. Finally a geologist noticed that some of these holes were funnel shaped and figured out that they had been formed by single boulders entrained in swirling currents. These boulders bored holes into the bedrock that became progressively smaller as the boulder cutting into the bedrock eroded itself and became smaller and smaller and eventually eroded away leaving no trace of its existence.

           

I have run across a number of potholes myself. Some were empty. Others, apparently still in the process of eroding, had single rocks a little bit smaller than the hole in them and still others were full of sand and gravel. I even saw a few places where holes had been bored completely through thin rock shelves by this process.

           

The rock in this area is characterized by numerous dikes and sills which create bands of different types of rock. Possibly the rock of the bridge was a narrow band that was harder or more competent than the surrounding rock and a pothole got started in some soft rock behind it. After the pothole had eroded down to or just below the level of the bridge, it hit another band of hard rock and the erosional forces were directed laterally to bore a hole through softer rock below the bridge. I’m not a geologist but this seems, to me, to be a likely scenario for the creation of the bridge and makes a pretty good story too. If this was in fact the process that formed the rock bridge, it would not surprise me if others existed. While these would certainly very be rare, they might not be as uncommon as one would think, especially in places where the rock and stream conditions are right.

             

I photographed the waterfall and rock bridge from several different angles and, while I thought these photos turned out well, they didn’t even come close to capturing the power and beauty of that place. While setting up at one location, I noticed that a small scrubby tree about an inch through had been cut neatly off with a saw in just the right place to take a photograph. It had been cut at least several years previous to my visit. The tiny stump was black with age so it had probably been cut many years before. I was not surprised that someone had been here before me. Given the at least 8000 year habitation of these lands by Native Americans followed more recently by the miners and trappers, all searching the nooks and crannies of the mountains in search of resources, and, even more recently, the people seeking recreation, I was under no illusion that I was the discoverer of this place. Ironically, this stump gave me a sense of well being. This was a lonely place in the middle of the howling wilderness but the stump, an indicator of a human presence in the relatively recent past, made me feel less lonely.

           

With my pictures taken, I scouted farther up the valley. On my way back by the rock bridge and waterfall, I noticed a very good place to camp in the woods only 100 feet or so back from the waterfall. There was a small spring issuing from the bottom of an old, partially timbered rock slide and there were several nice clear, flat spots amongst the trees between the spring and waterfall just big enough to pitch a tent or lay out a sleeping bag. Making a mental note of this camping spot, I continued on the long, hard journey out.

           

I made my second trip to the rock bridge two years later. The second trip was a little easier since I already knew the route and didn’t have to do any route finding. I also found that, in my mind, I had built up some of the harder spots along the way to be much worse than they actually were. I say it was easier but, make no mistake, it was still tough. The last half mile to the rock bridge was a lot harder than I had expected. On my first trip, I was at the point of exhaustion when I reached the last avalanche track before the rock bridge. So it was on the second trip only I had to push on, past the point of exhaustion, in order to reach the good camp near the rock bridge. I barely had the energy to set up my tent and cook dinner in the gloom of the waning day.

           

The rock bridge was the same as I had remembered. This was verified because I couldn't resist taking some more pictures which turned out to be pretty much the same as the ones I had taken on the first trip. The only thing of note on the second trip other than the hardship which I won’t belabor the reader with, happened on my way out. While crossing the bedrock gully near the bottom of the valley, one of the tag alders I was using as a veggie belay broke in my hand. Luckily the tough fibers of the trunk held and I didn’t go tumbling off into space. I was surprised. The tree was live and looked healthy with no obvious wounds. I made a mental note to be careful choosing handholds here if I ever came back. Of course I wasn’t planning on coming back. I thought my trips up that rugged valley were done.

           

It’s a good thing I remembered that broken tag alder because I found myself crossing that gully again five years later, on my way once more to indulge in self inflicted misery. This time though, I found a better way across the gully where I didn’t even need handholds. And I walked in seven miles the previous evening after work and camped, so I started out the day with seven fewer miles on my legs before I started into the valley. This helped make a rough trip a little easier. I was also lucky in that the route was pretty much the same. There were no new rock slides or avalanches to navigate, just the same old nasty brush and old slides to fight through. The stream was a little wider here and there where it had had room to migrate due to a big flood in ’03. Other than that everything seemed the same as before, or so I thought until I got to the rock bridge.

           

The camping spot near the rock bridge was the same but the rock bridge itself was another matter. The floodwaters of 2003 had stripped away the heavy growth of moss and vegetation around the bridge leaving the blue-gray granite bare and exposed. A rocky projection or horn of bedrock just above the bridge was gone. The edge of the great crack where I stood was bare as well, stripped clean by floodwaters so voluminous they overwhelmed the capacity of the narrow slot which was the normal stream course and spilled out over the surrounding bedrock and onto this ledge with enough energy to leave nothing behind but bare rock.

           

In my mind’s eye I could picture the scene of the flood, a gigantic seething mass of muddy brown water battering and scouring its way through the bedrock constriction to finally drain into the great crack in a swirling maelstrom. The place where I was standing, a cliff 100 feet above the present surface of the stream had been under several feet of swirling water at the edge of that maelstrom. I shuddered when I thought about it.

           

The rock bridge was still intact and, amazingly, it still sported most if not all of its vegetation, a two-tone green swath in the midst of blue-gray granite and white water. Some insane part of me couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like on that vegetated side of the rock bridge during the flood. The experience would have been beyond awesome, beyond terrifying. The force of the flood waters through the small space around the rock bridge must have been so great that it caused the water to shoot almost horizontally above and below the rock bridge leaving its side opposite the stream untouched and maybe even dry. If that moss and saxifrage could have only talked, what stories they would have had to tell. I took more pictures of course, noting that the small cut stump had survived well above the reach of the flood.

           

The area of the rock bridge and waterfall seemed a little less aesthetically appealing with all of the bare rock though it lacked not a bit of the overwhelming power that still caused my heart to beat faster and my breath to come quicker. I took more photos thinking that they wouldn't amount to much but when I got them back, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that all that bare rock made the vegetated green rock bridge stand out in stark contrast. I had been frustrated with the previous pictures because the rock bridge blended in with its surroundings and it was hard to convey in photos what it was. The earlier photos show only small bits of a stream in a rich mossy rock gorge but are otherwise unremarkable because the rock bridge blends in so well with its surroundings that it doesn’t stand out. Even in the new photos it was still impossible to convey the height of the waterfall and sheer magnitude of the place though. The new photos did a much better job of making the rock bridge stand out though they still pale when compared with the actual experience of standing there. 

           

I don’t know if I will ever return to the rock bridge. I have been to all the lakes I could find in that area so have no other reason to go back into the valley. Maybe someday I will return if my body is still functioning well enough to do the trip but I have a lot of other places to go in the meantime. I don’t even know if the rock bridge still exists. There has been at least one major flood since the last time I was there and one can assume that there will be many more in the future.  A boulder propelled through the slot by floodwaters and hitting at just the right spot could spell the end of the bridge, or an earthquake, or weary joints in the rock could finally succumb to the relentless force of flood waters or frost. I know that, as with all things in this world, one day it will cease to exist. I count myself lucky to have seen it during my short stay on this earth. It is certainly a special place to me but I think it would be for most people.

             

I know some American Indian cultures place great significance on waterfalls. I have heard of other cultures around the world where a specific god or gods are associated with special places. It seems to have all of the qualities that would sanctify a place. To reach it the pilgrim is tested by a journey filled with danger and almost constant hardship and discomfort. Upon arrival, the pilgrim experiences a place at once beautiful and terrifying with tons of water disappearing into the great crack, a dark mysterious void or even an entrance to another world at their feet. And above it, the rock bridge, is an anomaly making this cataract a great rarity among the many thousands of waterfalls pouring down off the rugged mountains. While standing at the edge of the great crack, one gets the feeling of a mysterious unseen presence permeating everything.

           

This could certainly be put down to the presence of some god or The God. One could also take the approach that this unseen presence can be explained by the hard laws of science in the physical world. I have heard that church organs produce sounds at pitches just out of the range of our hearing at the low end of the scale. Though these sounds are not audible, the subconscious mind still registers their vibrations, creating the sense of an unseen presence. The waterfall above and below the rock bridge produces a deep, muffled thunder and it would not surprise me if the same or similar phenomenon that is supposed to occur with church organs occurs at the rock bridge as well. Taking into consideration the rock bridge, the great crack and sense of an unseen presence, it would not be much of a stretch for me to see how a person could see the place as the abode of some god and how they could even be in the presence of that god or The God. And, provided nearby at a very convenient distance, a sweet, cold spring and soft duff covered flats in the timber where the pilgrim can rest and refresh himself and gather his strength for the hard journey out.

           

Whether one believes the place was created by a god or The God or prefers to put it all down to the random forces of nature following explainable physical laws, the sheer magnitude of the forces that created it, the rarity of the rock bridge and the sheer raw power present in the form of the waterfall still demand respect if not awe. 

The Rock Bridge as I first saw it in 2001. Some of the plants growing on it were a Saxifrage species or two, goatsbeard (Aruncus sylvester or dioicus)) and maidenhair fern (Adiantum pedatum) if I remember correctly, as well as several moss species. There were probably several other species of upland type plants there as well that I have forgotten about by this point in time. This photo and the ones that follow do not even begin to capture the magnitude of the experience of standing by this waterfall and rock bridge. 

The Rock Bridge in 2001, zoomed out slightly from previous photo. 

The Rock Bridge in 2006, from roughly the same location and magnification as the previous photo of 2001. There had been some big floods the winter previous to this photo (2005-2006). Note the scoured rock everywhere except the Rock Bridge where the vegetation remains. Also not that there is a point of rock over the stream channel on the right hand side above the Bridge that is present in 2001 but gone in this photo, making the slot in the bedrock wider. The white rock in the foreground is 20 or 30 feet from the waterfall and about one hundred feet above the stream, yet it has been scoured clean by floodwaters.  

2006. Same spot as previous photo. Zoomed out. 

2006. Same spot as previous two photos. Horizontal showing more of the setting of the Rock Bridge.