Wyatt Pace
Primary Outdoor Sport: Waterfall Hunting
Favorite Beverage: Orange Polar Seltzers
Sunrise or Sunset: Sunset
Non-Outdoor Hobby: League of Legends
Post-Trip Meal: Poutine
Favorite Season: Spring
Unmarked Waterfalls Found: 120+
Book Recommendation: The Crystal Shard
Three Words to Describe You: Driven, Confusing, & Empathetic
“I grew up in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. Every summer, my mom would have me go to the tops of these cool mountains and go to places that she thought would look really cool, from a photograph perspective so she could paint it. She's a watercolor artist. So I would hike, bushwhack, go to these places that she's like, ‘I really want that view.’ I would go and get those shots and she'd give me a little bit of money and then she would paint these insane watercolor landscapes. I've been passionate about the outdoors and doing crazy stuff that’s a little bit more off the beaten path since I was 10.”
“People do say, ‘Don't go chasing waterfalls,’ and they are wrong. You can chase as many waterfalls as you want.
I classify chasing waterfalls and hunting waterfalls as two different things. Hunting waterfalls is going after new stuff that doesn't have a place in modern history. Sure, someone may have been there 40 years ago, but I haven't seen a photo of it, it’s not on a map. I'm not claiming I'm the first one to go anywhere, but It is a fun thought to entertain that I might be the first person to be here in the last couple decades.
There are all these apps that can take folks to some pretty neat places. You can go to Multnomah and go see the waterfall. That's chasing waterfalls. There's not really a fine line between the two though.
You start chasing all the off-trail crazy ones. Then, people have hints and little places they're like, ‘Hmm, I wonder if that person went here to get in?’ kind of thing. That's where it's a fine line. It's make your own way, make your own path, and you're hunting from there. I'm not saying chasing waterfalls is bad, but going your own route is a lot more rewarding.”
“Speaking of proudest moments, there are a couple drops that come to mind. There was one falls I hit with a group that ended up being 268 feet tall. It was beyond insane. The photo that I posted of that place blew up and it created this buzz. There are a couple of different waterfalls that I've hit that have led me to believe that I'm doing something absolutely crazy and awesome at the same time.
Another place that comes to mind would be this insane drop south of the McKenzie River. I went in with a fellow waterfall hunter and the trip up that creek is ridiculously hard. We were definitely pushing our limits the first time I went in there. Then, we see this roaring wall through the trees, and we kind of just stopped in our tracks. I’m thinking, ‘No way it looks like that. Are you kidding me?’ It was a wall of water probably 200 feet high in one section, roaring. We couldn't hear each other. We made our way up to the base of it and I was just completely blown away”
“I definitely look for a journey to get to the places I go. There are a lot of people that know me that hate the fact that I go down to the creek and walk up it. A lot of folks will just take a ridge or a spine down to the falls, drop down the cliff, and then photograph it at the bottom.
I'm like, ‘Okay, there's a road over here, three miles this way and that's where the creek crosses. I'm gonna walk up the entire creek and make a whole day out of it.’
For me, it's all about the adventure and the journey to get there. Even if the falls is 40 feet tall or whatever, I’ll spend an entire day getting to that spot. If I'm just going after waterfalls, it's not worth it. But, a whole day of strenuous adventure, that's what I'm going for.”
“There's a Creek outside cottage grove, it was the brushiest I've ever been in. I had data suggesting that there was a waterfall there and the data looked cool. But, I got there and it was a boulder in the creek and the creek just went around on both sides.
It was only a mile of hiking, but it took me six hours to get there. It was just blackberry and every waterfall hunter's worst nightmare, devil's club, the entire way. It was in a canyon, but there was a boulder there, no waterfall.
The only way out was to go back the same way I came in. So, there's definitely those days where the data lies to me and I end up having kind of a horrible time.”
“It feels like modern day exploration. There are people going to places that don't exist on your apps, on your maps. There is data out there that suggests that there's crazy amounts of falls that haven't been mapped out yet. There's probably more off-trail waterfalls than the trailed ones. Oregon is home to a crazy amount of cool waterfall adventures that people can access all the time, online and through guidebooks. I would say more than half of them aren't known to the public. The crazy part is discovering and exploring those places.”
“The environment is always changing. It's moving around. I got snowmelt, I got sun. I have bees. I got so many different changing weather conditions that I have to account for and be like, ‘Do I want to go on a day where it's probably going to be hailing or flooding this canyon?’
There are spots where the water has risen for me exponentially and I've been stuck before and I've had to just chill out for a couple hours until it goes down. It's not a great place to be. You really have to weigh the risks before you go anywhere and be like, ‘Is nature gonna kill me today?’ That is a question that I've asked before. ‘Is nature on my side or is nature trying to screw me over?’”
“For me, it's a first descent or a first ascent, depending on my route for the day. It does get difficult because I am going in a way that would make sense for me if everything is free and clear. If I'm not running into cliffs, if I'm not running into any obstructions on the creek, log jams, wildlife.
The biggest ‘what if’ for me is ‘Can I even get to the spot that I need to park? Then, from there, am I going to get cliffed out? Am I going to roll an ankle in the creek? The first couple steps are always the hardest, leaving the car, because I look back at it and I'm just like, ‘Do I have everything? What the fuck am I doing? What shenanigans am I about to get into? Is it worth it?’
All those things still go through my head, especially when I do solo trips because I do a lot of solo. And so, I'm taking those first couple steps and I break through that inner layer of trees and nature opens up and all of a sudden I'm comfortable again.”
“I, like other people, use the outdoors for therapy. This is my therapy. This is almost my spirituality at this point. I'm not really a religious person, but being out here, soaking in some negative ions is the closest I come to a higher power.”
