Beware of a gut pile at parking lot at trailhead right by the main sign.  

15-20 rifle shots within 100yds of the trail that lasted roughly 30mins.

Other than that it was a lovely hike with lots of mushrooms and fall foliage.  

What a beautiful day for some trail work! We hiked about a mile and a half in to the work site and the trail seemed to be in pretty decent condition that far. One of the last reports showed a ton of blow downs and they've been removed. Today the team finished a puncheon, removed the first section of an old turnpike, started on putting in a new puncheon, and found and stripped new logs for later projects. Great job team! This was my first work party and I'm excited to do more. 

As for the trail itself, there are a few spots with great views of the White River and you can get right up next to it. It can be fairly rooty, but not too rocky. The forest road in (FR73) has some good sized potholes, but any car can make it if they're careful.  

Bob's 87th birthday is Thursday and since rain is predicted for Thursday, we did his BD meander today. We parked in the South TH which is on the left after crossing over the White River on a bridge on FR 7160 which takes you to the Ranger Creek CG and Airstrip. One car was parked in the lot where there is a picnic table and a garbage can but no restroom. A restroom can be found at the Ranger Creek CG and at the horse camp a short distance up the road from the TH. The trail begins across the road from the parking lot. We walked 4 miles RT turning around shortly after the 3rd bridge. We saw many fungi, but not the amounts and varieties that we saw on the Huckleberry Creek Trail last Thursday. 

Beautiful forested trail along the White River. Lovely wildflowers blooming all along the trail. We opted not to do the scramble to the falls.

We were the only car at the north trailhead at 9am (except for a motorhome which had obviously spent the night here). The outhouse remains as described in previous reports. The short road in from Highway 410 has some serious potholes but we were able to mostly avoid them, and just went slowly when we couldn't (Crosstrek). There were many wildflowers--coralroot orchid, pipsissewa, twin flower, bead lily, and more. We were looking for one of our favorites, wild ginger, especially since MossySketcher in the previous report had mentioned it was blooming. About a mile in we spotted the first ones. At the 2-mile mark we crossed Skookum Creek on a bridge and turned uphill (small sign) to see Skookum Falls. The trail is short but very steep and we thought it was a scramble in some places. The folks who cleared all the downed trees on the main trail did not get up here. The falls are lovely and we were glad we made it all the way. Since the air was damp with mist and water droplets, we did not stay for lunch but made our way down to sit on a dry log. We saw a total of four people for the entire day.