8/28/2020 We finally made it to Cataract Gorge. The Murdock Basin Road was open (the road was closed earlier because of a forest fire) so we drove about 3 miles down it until we really couldn't go any further in the car (not a well-maintained road). We parked and walked about 1/4 mile to Forest Road 027 and started on our journey.
As we continued down the road, Kurt kept saying, "We are going to have to climb out of here." The elevation gain was in coming back.
We saw this waterfall just from the road.
I could hear water and as we looked south of the road we saw this rocky ledge.
As we left the road and walked on the rocky ledge we saw more waterfalls.
We walked upstream on this rock ledge to see more waterfalls.
Kurt made me rock climb to get to this perch over the water.
These three pictures are of the waterfall I was sitting by but looking down from above it.
We were climbing up, over, down, and around.
We are moving down stream.
We are at the bottom of this waterfall, looking up.
Heading downstream again.
We finally came to the Gorge and Falls.
We could either hike back to the road or find a way down the mountain. (We could go no further following the stream.) So we bushwacked our way down--following an animal trail and sliding down on our bums.
You can see there was no way down following the stream.
The dam is upper left corner of picture. It dams the Duschene River.
There is a tunnel called the Duschene Tunnel (10' in diameter and 6 miles long) that diverts water from this reservoir to the Provo River water drainage.
We started up, up, up the road and saw Mt. Baldy peeking through the vista.
We went off the road on the way up and saw these small falls.