Started around noon on Saturday and found the trailhead surprisingly empty. (There were plenty of cars, but with the nice weather I thought it would be packed.) I was also surprised to see more people coming out from overnight trips on Friday than there were going in on Saturday.

My plan was to hike as far as I could with daylight or until I hit snow. I ended up stopping around the 10 mile mark since it didn't look like there would be many good camping spots until I made it to Ingalls Lake (which was a bit more effort than I was looking for.) 

I met a guy that had a couple of huge saws with him and he was clearing blowdowns. The trail was totally clear until mile 10 but the blowdowns picked up quite a bit after that.

The trail was in great shape and every creek along the way had dry crossings.

The Ingalls Creek Trail is a challenging hike with a total out-and-back distance of 28.9 miles.

Our LTF crew spent 3 nights and 4 days on the trail performing maintenance.

The first 4 miles of the trail were fairly clear with only small sections that were found to be overgrown and required brushing. Some areas of the trail required a good amount of tread work to rebuild the trail, roughly 30 cumulative yards. Other areas were slightly flooded and muddy so we installed some new drainage paths for the various small streams to pass over the trail without further damage. Roughly 25 feet of new drains were installed. 

After our 4 days on the trail we were able to complete a good amount of tread work and brushing work to make the trail cleaner and more passable. We will be returning to this trail for further maintenance work in June. 

The trail was in overall good condition and the bugs were at a minimum - a great hike for the summer season!

This trail is lovely! We went up ~6.5 miles and there was no snow, only a small amount of mud, and lovely wildflowers. We heard one rattlesnake in a bush off the trail and were told about several others by other hikers. There were nice campsites along the river every 1/2-1 mile or so, with some clustered together more closely. As a note, both my CalTopo track and my boyfriend's Strava track show over 2000 feet of gain going down the trail ~6.5 miles and back, and just looking at a topo map I see we went from 1950 feet at the trailhead to 3490 feet where we turned around, so I think the trail description showing 1450 feet of gain for the full 14.4 mile train one way is inaccurate. The trail is rolling with ups, downs, and flat sections, but definitely trends up heading up the valley.

We got to the trailhead at 10am Sunday and then sadly discovered we didn't have a tent with us, so it was 3:30pm when we started the hike after a trip back to Seattle for the tent. It was warm in the afternoon and many camp sites were full over Memorial Day weekend, but we found an empty site by the river 3.3 miles in. The campsite had a fair number of ants, but it didn't bother us.

The next day we hiked further down the trail to ~6.5 miles from the trailhead (a bit past the Falls Creek Trail turnoff). There were a few muddy spots on the trail but not many, as well as a few small stream crossings where we were able to step across on rocks or logs. We stopped at a point where the views opened up across the valley to enjoy the sunshine, and then we turned around back to camp, packed up, and hiked the rest of the way out.

Arrived Saturday late morning and easily found a spot, and then a campsite, on a holiday weekend. 

Wanted to share more about campsites since WTA doesn’t have info in the description : 

•First campsite is RIGHT at the start of the trail, like, parking lot adjacent. 
•Next one is about .85 miles in. Path to river to collect water. We stayed here - dropped our bags, set up camp & did the rest of the hike without the weight! Was nice to be 15-20 min from the car the next morning. 
•Next camp is about a mile from the lot - this one is pretty with a river view and access. 
•The next camp was about a 15-20 minute hike from there. 

I stopped tracking then, but we saw several more big, lovely campsites on our 5.5/6 mile hike in. They all had fire pits & good trees for hammock camping. Did about 11 miles round trip the first day. 

Lots of wildflowers — tons of trillium in 3-4 different colors & Indian Paintbrush, some lupine & a few others. Some butterflies. River is flowing hard and loud! 

Pretty hike & right off the highway! 

The trail was in mostly good condition, except the warm weather made some of the creek crossings, especially up before Hardscrabble Creek pretty swift and deep.

1- the resident rattler is back near the pit vault.  I didn't see it, but other hikers I talked to did. Watch your dog in that area. I heard reports of other rattlers that live near there too. 

2 - about 1/2 mile beyond Hardscrabble creek area, the down has NOT been removed on the way to the lake. Be prepared to turn around or do Parkour over the jackstraw trees. 

Ingalls Creek is running really high, so be careful around the water- watch your dogs!