Roaring Multnomah Falls Gave Birth to a Baby Waterfall

• Kate Harbour
• Multnomah Falls and baby Multnomah Falls on Dec 9

Multnomah Falls was roaring yesterday when Friends of the Columbia Gorge employees Stan Hall and Kate Harbour arrived in the parking lot on I-84.

“The sound was remarkable. I’ve been there many times and have never seen it like that,” says Hall, content PR specialist. “When we got out of the car we could feel the spray in the parking lot. I thought it was raining at first.”

Hall and Harbour showed up to make a promotional video and got this impressive clip of the falls and the overflow falls coming down to the right in the frame:

Stan Hinatsu, Recreation Program Manager for the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Forest Service, says flows that large at Multnomah Falls typically occur every few years, but that with the dry winters we’ve been having it’s been a while since it’s been that heavy.

“There was a lot of overflow, but it didn’t reach levels like we had during (the floods in) 1996,” Hinatsu says. “We did set up sandbags to try and keep the creek that runs next to the path from the parking lot to the falls from overflowing, and they didn’t keep the water back.”

Hinatsu says he’s seen flows this large at the falls “a number of times” during his 20 years working in the Columbia River Gorge.