Kitsap Waterfall Survey: "Dickerson Falls"

This will probably be my last Kitsap Waterfall post for some time due to being at Central Washington University for the next several months, but I wanted to get it out before the summer.

I have made the decision to combine two waterfalls, "Cleft Falls" and "Cable Falls" on Dickerson Creek. I was able to visit these two falls on my last major waterfall survey after I found "Melange Falls" and "Cedar Gorge Falls" (which will have a write up about them in the summer or fall.)

My reasoning for combining these two falls is that they are extremely close together, mere feet. So in hindsight, I think they are really two drops of one large fall. My reason for not deciding to do this when I first discovered them is, quite simply, I was inexperienced and hadn't made up my "requirements" for the survey. So now, I'm going back and correcting that.

So, since both of these falls are being combined, the names "Cleft" and "Cable" are going to be dropped and I'm going to rename this waterfall "Dickerson Falls" after it's source creek, and since that's what the Ueland Tree Farm calls it. It is also sometimes referred to as "Chico Falls" by locals.

The upper horsetailing tier of "Siletzia Falls" at moderate flow. Photo by Micah K. 

"Dickerson Falls" begins immediately after Dickerson Creek pours over a small abandoned concrete dam which backs up the creek to form Beaver Dam Lake. The first tier cascades five to ten feet before horsetailing over a large basalt shelf around 20 feet into a large plunge pool, which is frequently used as a swimming hole during the summer. After exiting the plunge pool, the second tier begins. The second tier cascades 20 to 25 feet over a big buttress of blocky basalt, it's rather ugly: crisscrossed with huge downed trees and several old logging cables. Below the falls the creek heads into a narrow gorge with some smaller cascades and rapids, before continuing down the canyon.