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Fallen leaf lake bike trail2/19/2024 ![]() Take Hwy 89 north from the Hwy 50 junction for about 3 miles. You will see Fallen Leaf Road on your left. Take Fallen Leaf Road about 5 miles and continue left upon seeing the marina and signs for the falls. Continue straight past the firehouse and parking for the lower falls is along the right side of the road. The space had been used as a park exclusively for Georgia-Pacific employees and, prior to 1984, part of the area had been the site of the Dead Lake/Camas Catholic Cemetery.Ĭontinue further and you’ll arrive at the parking lot for Desolation Wilderness and the upper falls.In 2011, the City of Camas purchased the 55 acres surrounding Dead Lake, now renamed Fallen Leaf Lake, from the Georgia-Pacific Corporation. In that year, however, the graves were exhumed and their contents transported to the Camas Cemetery. As a recreational site, Dead Lake had been morbidly famous for an unknown number of drownings, with claims that the aquatic plants had tangled swimmers and dragged them down into the unmeasured depths. According to local legend, some of the drowning victims’ bodies were never recovered. It is unclear whether it was these mysterious circumstances or that fact that there was a cemetery on site which gave the lake its name. Now that the area is a public park, the name has been changed to invoke more positive connotations, and a trail system, including a winding tangle of mountain bike trails, has been developed.įrom the winter parking area, take the footpath leading north along a low ivy ridge under a canopy of Douglas-fir. Reach slough-like Fallen Leaf Creek, which connects Fallen Leaf Lake with Lacamas Lake. Return to find a trail that takes you up over the low ridge and across a games field with picnic tables. Continue towards the lakeshore, and then turn left back past the picnic shelter and across the main parking area. Past the winter gate, a trail leads left at a pet waste dispenser. ![]() There is a confusing mix of trails in the forest here, many of them designed for mountain bikers. At a junction keep left, and then go right at the next junction. ![]() The woods here are choked with ivy and tall holly bushes. Continue up the slope, keeping left at junctions. Just before a softball field, go right and switchback down to a bottomland of mossy big-leaf maples and blackberry vines. Reach a junction at a large maple tree: to do a winding loop up the slope past larger trees, make a left here.Ī few yards later, go right up the slope, and switchback onto an old road bed at a large Douglas-fir. Switchback three more times in a mixed forest of Douglas-fir, cedar, hemlock, and maple with an understory of sword fern and Oregon grape. Keep winding up, and then make a traverse before heading up a gully. Soon, drop down the gully past an old cistern, make a traverse, rise up the slope, and then begin dropping down a ridge line on a sometimes braided trail, getting glimpses of Fallen Leaf Lake through the trees.
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