This was part of a multi day effort from WTA volunteers to reroute this nasty rock fest of a trail and make a much nicer trail. But first the road, which is also a rock fest after the first few miles. It's rough, there are 2 major dips where the water has run across earlier, you can make it but you will need to slow down to a crawl. Then potholes and rocks all the way. My 04 Forester did fine, but I was going slow, in 1st gear coming down.Someone on our work party did drive a regular passinger car up and made it. 

Our trail reroute consisted of bypassing the rock gully loosely referred to as the 'trail' and making a couple of long switchbacks instead. Benching back, filling in holes with rock (no shortage of those on THIS work party) and topping it off with mineral soil, also not hard to find. The woods is scraggly old 2nd growth that really needed to be thinned about 30 yrs ago, so not a lot of understory and duff. Why fix a gnarly trail like this? Well it will make it sustainable for years and keep the erosion down to a minimum. We didn't make it up to 3 O Clock Rock, so don't know this years conditions from higher up. The nastiness has not been eliminated from the rock on, so you can still have your challenge. 

Finished up helping with the diversion from yesterday.

Rested for a bit after the maintenance crew disbanded, filled up my water bladder, lightened my pack, then started the hike.

The route to the rock climbing area is properly brushed and nice, but unstable trail due to the organic tread. It’s also really rocky and rooty in sections.

After the rock climbing area, the trail condition gets worse; muddy, bushwhacking mess, with steeper rooty steps, and the tread narrows down to goat trail width. There are deep streams to cross too in areas; choose your rocks wisely when crossing. To top it off, there are 15+ blowdowns after the wilderness boundary, so chainsaws aren’t allowed :/.

I hit snow at 3.7k’, which persisted to the pass. In addition to the beforementioned conditions, there are multiple stream crossings across waterfalls and water is flowing down the trail in spots, over lace deep.

All this being said, the view of Three Fingers, Bullen, Whitehorse, Higher Squire, Helena, and Glacier was sooooo worth the climb. I’d definitely like to do Higher Squire when there’s less snowpack on it (avalanche concerns because route was over 35 degrees) and when I have more time.

The ascent took me 2.5 hours; the descent took 2.25 hours.

Helped build a new diversion for the trail. The trail is snow free in the first mile, but I can’t guarantee that beyond the point I could observe.

Higher clearance vehicles recommended because there are 4 dips in the road with large loose crushed rock for seasonal runoff. Drive slow with medium clearance vehicles. My Subaru almost bottomed out when I took the first dip too quickly.

Road is 2wd accessible, though high clearance recommended not due to potholes but rather a couple repaired sections of road that dip way down. As stated by previous reviews, trail is very steep overall with a few really stupid parts, and is mostly in decent shape until the creek crossing, after that it really does look like some kind of goat trail. Something to consider: this trail has a heavy root and rock presence for pretty much its enitirety which makes for a slick trek during the wet season, especially the roots! There were a few snow patches after the creek but we hit actual snow 1.7 miles in, and that's where we decided to turn around. I would only do this hike again if it's dry.