The 2021 Schneider Springs fire did a number on this trail. While sections are still forested and quite pleasant, you will traverse some completely burned zones, and the tread is faint in a few places.
After turning off the paved Bumping River Rd., the spur road to this trailhead starts out quite steep and narrow. Even though we were driving a truck, we decided we would rather just walk to the trailhead, and parked in a small turnout 50 yards up the road. The rest of the road to the trailhead was decent, but had enough roots and rocks that I wouldn't take any low clearance cars on it. There are a few nice dispersed camping sites up this road, but only one was occupied on this Father's Day weekend.
We had a mixed group of trail runners, hikers, and doggos on this day, with the goal of making it to Old Scab Creek for a total of around 6 miles. The crossing of Thunder Creek was easy enough in two parallel logs, however, further down the trail encounters a side channel of the Bumping River. Now there is a large conveniently fallen Ponderosa that makes crossing this branch of the river quite easy, however the trail has to cross back over the river at some point, and it gets quite brushy past that spot. Flagging is visible in the brush, perhaps leftover from the recent WTA work party, but the trail is still in danger of being lost without further action. Thank you WTA volunteers for your hard work clearing the first section of the trail!
If you are camping in the area, and are looking for a shorter and mostly flat hike or jog, Nile Ridge checks those boxes, but it would be a brushy adventure past mile 2! Keep a lookout for elk, because there were a lot of tracks and fresh sign along the trail. We ended up just seeing a buck in velvet, but the elk were out there somewhere!
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