Wenaha River Trail — Wednesday, Jun. 12, 2019

I hiked the entire length of the Wenaha River Trail over 3 days, and encountered pretty bad trail conditions, which was horrible at times.  Prior to my trip I checked WTA.org and found multiple entries for the first 6 miles to Crooked Creek, but no entries for the trail past this point.  I want to give an account of the entire trail, since there were many obstacles to know about.

The first 5 miles are easy, the trail is open and easy to follow, only a few fallen trees to go around or over.  The trail starts on a grassy hillside traverse with Ponderosa pines.  These are the last trees, the next 15 miles there was a prior forest fire and the trees are all black and charred.  Along the route there are several high traverses, where the trail is 200 feet above the river dancing along a ledge in the steep volcanic hillside.  There are a couple muddy places, and several nice meadows.  I found many beautiful blooming wildflowers, with lots of bugs zooming about.

You can wear shorts for the first 5 miles, but after that, you better put on sturdy hiking pants.  I took running shoes, and suffered from hundred of grass seed heads/burrs in my socks, poking my feet like needles.  The last 1 mile to Crooked Creek has a few overgrown places, but not bad.  I did step right over a rattlesnake while walking out of a waist high thicket, luckily he didn't strike.

Crooked Creek is an easy ford, and there's a meadow just past the creek.  But the next couple miles the trail gets worse, but is still not too difficult to follow.  About 7-8 miles from the trailhead it gets really bad, and stays really bad for a horrible 20 mile stretch.  The trail alternates from traversing along the hillside, to dropping down to the flat river valley bottom.  There are countless blow downs throughout the length of this middle section of this trail, but the worse by far are the sections where the trail is along the flat valley bottom.  At times the brush was over my head, sometimes it wrapped around my thighs and I had to fight past.  There was a time or two where the trail went under a series of fallen blurt trees and I could not find the trail under the undergrowth, just a sea of bracken fern and other plants, and I had to bushwhack a route through and find it on the other side.  Several times I was walking through head high brush, with branches and leaves in my face and I couldn't see, then I'd hit a log, trip over a rock, or step in to an unseen hole and fall down.

Plus, it was so hot today, and it feels really humid in the overgrown sections.  I was sweating, dirty, and tired.  Luckily there are several river access points, or multiple creeks, that I used to  splash water over my head or take a dip.

It felt like it takes forever to make any forward progress.  With the overgrown trail, countless logs to either climb over, under, or go around, and the heat, I was spending so much energy and moving slowly.  I had a moment where I though about turning around, but I wanted to hike the entire Wenaha Trail, so I kept going.

The trail is much better when you get to the Slick Ear Creek Trail junction because over the next one mile there are four trail junctions, and it's obvious people hike up and down these trails, so that the Wenaha River Trail sees more foot traffic here.  There are three fords (two creek and the North Fork Wenaha River).  The north fork ford is the hardest, it narrow but swift and lower thigh deep, with slippery boulders underfoot.

I did have a moment of confusion just past the junction for Round Butte Trail.  After passing this trail I stayed on the trail, and came to a ford of the Wenaha River.  I'm not supposed to ford yet, so somehow I got onto the Elk Flat Trail instead of the Wenaha Trail.  I backtracked to the Round Butte Trail (which is in a meadow) and found the trail (unseen) goes across the meadow to the right, and back into the woods.

The trail becomes brushy and overgrown again once back into the forest, but not as bad as it was in the middle section.  A mile or so before Milk Creek there is a nice 30 foot high waterfall, 30-40 feet off-trail to the right.  I bushwhacked up the tiny creek to the base of the falls to get a picture.

Once at Milk Creek the trail is in excellent condition, wide open, well maintained, no blowdowns that I can remember, it's a perfect forested trail gently climbing uphill to reach trail's end at Timothy CG.  There's a red picnic table to rest/eat lunch, and a big green meadow.

A few notes: water- There's plenty of water.  The trail dips down to get near the river several times, and there are dozens of creeks.

Camps: lots and lots of possible camps.  Complete solitude.

Trail junctions: many are lost and obliterated:  I never saw the Hoodoo trail.  The Fairview Bar Trail is unseen, but I found it (I hiked up this trail on trip#2, which I will also write a report about).  To find the Fairview Trail, go 4 miles past Crooked Creek, and 1/2 before before Fairview Creek, there is a charred tree trunk with a half burned trail sign (no words, just a partial trail sign), with a short blue rag hanging on it.  This is the Fairview trail junction.

I'm not 100% sure about the junction for the Cross Canyon Trail, but I did see a blue ribbon trail marker tied to a broken branch on a blackened fallen log along the river, and this is a wide river area, so I'm guessing this ribbon marks the ford for this trail.

Jussaud Trail: never saw it.

The other trails have easy to find junctions.

Bugs: no mosquitoes (maybe one or two) but I did flick off about a dozen ticks.

Wildlife: 3 elk, 5 rattlesnakes, western tanager (many other birds too), deer, bear prints in a small patch of snow