Today I drove about an hour and a half west to Lake Roosevelt to check out a water fall I heard about. I found it and much more. Hawk Creek Falls is part of the Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area. Lake Roosevelt is the name of the reservoir created by the Grand Coulee Dam over twenty miles downstream.
Hawk Creek Falls is a few miles past Fort Spokane and the historical site that includes remnants of the former military post. This building is the post’s stables. If time allows, I highly recommend a brief stop here on the way to Hawk Creek.
A short road leads to a small campground. Here Hawk Creek is only a creek during the winter/spring drawdown of Lake Roosevelt. In the summer this is a bay of the lake.
Just upstream of the campground, the creek passes through a small short basalt canyon.
At the end of the canyon is a beautiful little waterfall that supposedly flows year round.
From the campground a short roadway leads to a parking lot for hiking trails. On the way to it I caught a glimpse of a cave in a basalt canyon wall above me.
Even though there really isn’t a trail to it i just had to check it out. A really steep informal path lead from the parking area to the cliff. It was more of a climb than it looked at first.
On the way up the views of Hawk Creek opened up. What appeared to be a small canyon connected the creek to a bay of Lake Roosevelt. Up here the vegetation was mostly open grasslands.
The last part of the climb up to the cliff face was extremely steep and involved some hand crawling. The lichens were a nice bonus.
When I made it to the cave, I went to the back and enjoyed the view back out. Like most caves in basalt cliffs it was short and didn’t lead to the underworld.
It did make for a nice frame for the epic scenery below.
While up here I checked out the views. It looked like their might be other small caves on nearby bluffs but by now I knew the distance to these cliffs was a lot further than it looked and the topography much steeper. Also the faint trail I had followed to this point pretty much disappeared.
I made my way back to the parking lot and then took the real trail. The first part of the trail meandered through an open ponderosa pine forest and climbed over a small saddle that divided the uplands from a small ridge that screened the canyon part of Hawk Creek.
Looking back towards the waterfall I could see the valley of the creek kind of as it was before the dam flooded it.
When I made it past the saddle I had a nice view back up the canyon I bypassed. During summer pool stage boaters can head up this waterway to a small boat ramp at the same place I was parked.
The trail kind of ended at the beginning of a beautiful beach. It looked almost like the coast of Oregon.
I wasn’t expecting a beach hike but that’s what I got, at least for about a mile or so. It looked almost like dune grass growing along the shoreline.
Even through there’s no elevation gain along the lake, the hiking is harder than it looks due to the soft sand and noticeable cross slope. The beach wrapped around a couple of distinct headlands offering a variety of views.
It definitely looked like the tide was out but here instead of twice a day the water rises and falls once a year.
Eventually I did come to an end point. A headland of basalt blocked further progress along the shoreline. From here I had a view of the main body of the lake, the part that once was the Columbia River.
The return trip was just as nice and interesting. In places the terraces made by the receding water were obvious.
A waterfalls, a cave and a beach. This hike had all three. I’m not sure what my favorite was but Hawk Creek is truly a gem in the middle of Washington.
If you want to explore this area I would recommend sticking to the springtime. When the water level rises most of the beach hike would be impassible and like much of Central Washington it can get awfully hot in the summer and the shade is limited.
