Beautiful winter hike! I've done this a few times but never this time of year. The first part of the trail from the Curly Creek TH has many branches covering the trail, a huge tree down, and an area of complete trail coverage from branches. It is still manageable if you are sure-footed. You could avoid this part and start up near the Lower Falls area. It is muddy in places, of course, and the creek crossings are doable, but you still could get a foot in the water. I love hiking this time of year, the crisp weather and roaring river and waterfalls. The rocks at the bottom of the Upper Falls were covered in ice, so we could not sit there and enjoy the scenery. With the water flowing so strong too and the powerful falls, it felt like we were getting rained on.

Beware of road conditions! We came up through Carson and hit snow covered roads near the snow parks, then as we dropped to NF90 to the TH, the roads were clear of snow. The road (NF90) to the TH was littered with branches. People have cut back most of the big trees, just be careful. There is one spot where the road, in the gravel part, has sunk. Thankfully we got out and scouted before flying down the sunken part. Only high-clearance vehicles with 4WD should attempt this, I assume most vehicles would bottom out/get stuck.

I've hiked the Lewis River Falls trail before but opted to explore other trails in the area. I started my hike at the crab creek trailhead and went up the bluff trail towards the forest road 93. The bluff trail was a bit overgrown, but still easy to follow.
This trail is very steep and do not recommend unless you have poles. I felt like I was climbing straight up! About a mile towards the end of the trail, I encountered snow. It was just a dusting on the trees and trail.

I then walked the road towards cussed hollow and Spencer butte trailhead. Originally I had planned to hike up Spe cerButte but as there was snow on the road and it was snowing now, I decided to save that for another day. they looked out trailed, but there was quite a bit of snow.
My returnbtrio was down the cussed hollow trail. I can tell that this trail is predominatly used by mountain bike since it was very cambered at parts. The trail is in good shape outside of that. Note that there is a river crossing which looked about calf deep. However,there is a ver large downed tree that easy to use to cross the river. The trail ends at the beginning of the wright meadow trail , which is also seems to be a mountain bike trail which was pretty hard to walk on. I then took the Lewis river trail past the lower falls back to the crab creek trailhead. Elevation gain was 2,776 ft with 11.59 miles hiked.

Hiked from Crab Creek TH to the Upper Falls TH for a RT of ~10mi. It's mostly shaded and passes 5 falls - Upper Copper Creek is a very small side waterfall. and then there's lower, middle, and upper Lewis Falls, which you can get down to the water on. The three Lewis Falls probably have the best lighting in the afternoon for pictures. The last falls was Taitnapum Falls - which there's no great viewpoint for, it looks similar to the other 3 falls on Lewis River, but there's no trail down and trees block most the view

The trail mostly has a mild grade with a few shorter steeper climbs mixed in. Was fairly crowded on a Sat.

There's drinking water at the campground if you need to refill and don't have a filter. It tastes very metallic like iron, so you may be better filtering river water.

Saw some salmon swimming upstream around 4pm near the Crab Creek end of the trail.

it's worth swinging by Big Creek Falls on your drive in (this fall likely has better lighting in the morning) as it's about 8 mi before the Crab Creek TH. it's a very short distance to that fall. There's no sign, so be sure to keep an eye on the location in the maps app.

Great hike. Unfortunately, I believe I left my camera on the back of my truck bumper as I was loading up my gear to leave. I have no idea where the camera fell off. I’m posting this in the hopes that someone found it. If so, please contact me at tobiabr at gmail. It would be much appreciated.

Finally got to take the kids for some last minute outing in St Helens area.

First stop: Ape Caves. Ranger checked the reservation at the booth and we got there in time for our 11 AM reservation.

The parking area was busy as expected. We only did the lower cave as I thought the upper cave would be too challenging for my 4 year old. Crowd was pretty spread out for the lower cave and the terrain was just perfect for small kids. Brought our own headlamps and a mini lantern that we'd use for camping.

Second stop: Trail of two forests. This one was also not busy. There were picnic benches that were perfect for lunch after doing all these mini caving stuff. The trail was a short 0.5 mi loop walk on a boardwalk and there's a mini lava tube experience that we all did. Kids loved it. I had my backpack so I had to crawl and drag my hiking pack inside of the tube :)

Third stop: Decided to backtrack for a bit to have lunch at Lone Fir Restaurant. Previous trip reporter mentioned about getting a huckleberry ice cream. I got a thick yummy huckleberry milkshake instead 🙂.

Last stop: Upper Lewis River Falls. We we were not so lucky with the Lower Lewis River Fall reservation. The Platinum Creek Parking by the horse camp seemed to have a last minute availability so we took that option instead. The mileage from the parking area to the first viewing area of the Upper Falls was around 2.7 mi RT. Add additional 0.5 mi RT to the second (main) viewing area. We didn't get to the second viewing area as kids were tired and were ready to head home.

Overall, a great full day outing even though the weather was mixed. Next time I would make an advance reservation for camping in the area so we could take our time.