May 31, 2016 - Fungi Falls, Polk County

Fungi Falls is relatively new to the waterfall hunting scene. A few years back, Andy (Fungi) Kunkle and SCJack were studying topo maps and saw potential in the Green River Gamelands in Polk County. They never checked out Ostin Creek themselves, but Andy mentioned it to Kevin Adams and the next day Kevin found this beautiful waterfall. I've known about it for a while since then, but this was my first good chance to check it out. It turns out it's less than 15 miles from my house!

I have directions to the waterfall on my site here. I was using the directions from Kevin, but when I got to the area and saw where the top of the upper waterfall was, I decided to start there instead. I recognized the upper waterfall from Stephanie Leigh's photos that she posted on Facebook. When I saw her pictures, I knew I had to get down there soon. I spent quite a bit of time here shooting stills and video. The first picture is the view I had when I first arrived at the falls. After shooting from here, I climbed up the rock for a closer look at the top part of the waterfall. The shelved and striped rock was amazing! You can see more of that in the video at the bottom of the page.

Upper Fungi Falls

Just below this section of waterfall is another small cascade, then a drop of 10-12' or so.

Looking down creek from the bottom of this, I could see the land dropping off dramatically. I walked over for a look and knew I had to keep heading down. This area was the very top of Fungi Falls and it is amazing.

It was very safe to be in this area as long as I didn't do anything stupid. I had a good view looking down towards the base of the falls and after I got all of the pictures and video I wanted, that's where I headed.

Looking up at all of this falling water in this pristine location really made my day. So close to civilization, but visited by very few people. The waterfall is probably over 100' high and that's not including the upper waterfall I went to first.

Fungi Falls

I could see that the creek dropped off more - and that's what my topo map showed also - but I decided to save the rest of it for another day. Below is video beginning at the top.