After leaving Vincent Falls, we continued north on Highway 101 for about another 30 miles to Dosewallips Road, where we left the highway to find Rocky Brook Falls.
Before we turned off to visit Rocky Brook Falls, we made a failed attempt to locate Hamma Hamma Falls using roadsigns and our best guess, since we hadn’t acquired clear directions before the trip, and our GPS didn’t seem to know anything about the waterfall. I guess that was all right, because we really didn’t have enough time to visit more than two of the four waterfalls that we were knew of along this stretch of 101, so as soon as we realized we weren’t going to easily find Hamma Hamma Falls, we moved on.
Unlike Hamma Hamma Falls, our GPS was well aware of Rocky Brook Falls and we were able to drive directly to the trail head. I should mention that the Olympic Peninsula Waterfall Trail website gives clear directions for finding this waterfall, as well as all the others that we were interested in visiting. We just hadn’t spent enough time planning for our adventure as we should have.
For as nice a waterfall as Rocky Brook Falls is, there were surprisingly few visitors. When we arrived at the trailhead, we found that it was just a wide spot in the road with room for about a dozen cars to pull off and park. It was only about half full, so we knew that we wouldn’t encounter hoards of other people at this one.
It was a short, easy walk along a well groomed trail to get to the falls. We especially hoped to find waterfalls like this that were easily accessible for my parents who were with us on this trip. They get around pretty well, but long and rugged trails would definitely hold them back.
Signage along the way warns that water levels can change rapidly, so visitors should be aware of sudden stream flow changes. One old roughly made and obscure sign didn’t leave me with a seriously threatened feeling. I have to believe that if there were serious danger, the point would have been made much more boldly. We watched out, nonetheless.
There weren’t many people at the falls while we were there, but the few that were there were sure a disruptive bunch. Some were swimming and they had strewn out towels, backpacks, and clothing over the rocks at the base of the falls. For those of us who were there to get some photographs of the falls, it sure made things challenging. We had to maneuver ourselves to places where the people and all the junk were outside of the picture frame. We managed a few decent shots.
It’s estimated that this waterfall is about 150 feet tall. I wouldn’t call it “spectacular”, but very nice. It is a nice retreat for a hot summer day. Because it is so easy to get to, I can’t think of a reason to skip it if you have a little time and plan to be in the area.
