Beautiful wooded trail to a view of the falls.

A tree was leaning across and over the road and with some branches hanging down It was just barely passable with my 10-ft tall camper van. The road has potholes, but they weren't too bad.

With visiting grandkids to entertain, herself and I decided it was high time we saw Murhut Falls in person, so up the Duckabush River we went. I'm grateful that the USFS decided to grade and gravel the Duckabush Road a couple of years back, because it makes the drive simple for any vehicle. Now the prize for worst road on this side of the Olympics goes to..the road to Upper Dungeness!

It was a perfect day, sunny and in the 70's, as we headed up the trail at about 11:30 AM. That's actually lunchtime for these two granddaughters (6 and 8), but finding hiking sticks for them distracted them long enough for us to get started. The trail was mostly shady with occasional views down into the valley fed by Murhut Falls. Tread was in good shape, with only a few narrow ledge-side spots where we had to keep a close eye on our budding hikers.

We got to the lunch/photo bench across from the upper falls by noon, so lunch wasn't delayed by much. There was one other party of younger, hardier hikers (water bottles in hand, no other safety gear present) who opted to scramble across the lower logs and try to get, what, into the spray or something? All we know is that we had to delay our picture-taking until the craziest one finally worked his way back to safety (and out of our frame). But having the viewpoint to ourselves made it the finest lunch spot around.

We explored the lower end a little, mostly to look at the rock formations and get a few more pictures before heading back. Though we were back to the car shortly after 1, by consensus, this trip counted as a "hike", which generates an automatic stop at the Hoodsport Coffee Company for Olympic Mountain ice cream. Hard to find a better way to end a beautiful day!

NOTE (for hiking with little ones): when you reach Highway 101 on your return, you are only 3 miles south of Dosewallips State Park. The day use area has bathrooms with running water and spots where wading in river side channels is available and fairly safe. Sometimes kids need stuff we don't plan for!

Beautiful, well-maintained trail. The waterfall is magnificent.

This short hike offers a great reward: the impressive cascade of Murhut Falls. We also enjoyed spotting trilliums, salmon berry blossoms, and bright green young sword ferns along the trail. The trail is in good condition the whole way. The footing gets a bit more challenging near the waterfall, so some hikers might appreciate poles. We were one of five parties on the trail at 10am on Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, but on our way back around 10:45am, there was a pretty steady stream of folks headed up the trail and the parking area was full. 

Murhut Falls - Went here first. No outhouse or trash can at trail head so plan accordingly. This is a true family friendly hike. Short and sweet. Our crew today was 4 adults, 1 baby, 1 toddler and 2 dogs. Photo of the falls in this trip report is from the upper viewing area. From the lower area, you get sort of an obstructed view of the falls because of the trees. For us, since our toddler likes to wander, we didn't take the kiddo out of the hiking backpack since the upper area is kind of narrow and on the lower area, we didn't want any slips on the rocks. (Older kids would be fine here.) Look up and around because there are some rhodies here and there!

Ranger Hole - Went here second. Note, these trails do not have a trail that connects them. It's about 4 miles on the forest road between Murhut Falls trail head and Ranger Hole trail head so we drove between the two locations. (I suppose if you really wanted to, you could walk the forest road between the two ...) There is an outhouse (did not use.) This is another short and sweet hike. However, the trek back up from the river is very steep and I would be careful of footing because it is gravel. During rainy/muddy conditions, I would be wary of this part of the trail. (We had great sunny/clear weather!)