A lovely hike on a cool windy spring day.  Lots of flowers and birds and a big variety of different forest and riparian habitats. And snakes (!) We saw 6 snakes, two of them were rattlesnakes, one of those we had to detour around.  The trail- It starts out nice and slowly gets worse until you give up.  I like bushwalking, so we got a long way before giving up about half way to Umtanum falls. I suppose you could make it all the way with sufficient determination, but it could very slow going.  The GiaGPS map is pretty good in telling you which side of the stream you should be on.  Or you can just try and turn back when it obviously wrong.  Expect to cross the stream a lot.  It was fine with boots- if you had sneakers you would have wet feet.   Enjoy!

Great day hike down a pleasant canyon with a burbling creek. The trail was well defined for the first 3 miles or so, but after a couple of wet stream crossings, the trail just petered out. I found it here and there, but mostly it seemed to be somewhere else and I couldn't find it. I climbed up the scree so I could get out of the brush along the creek, but my second rattlesnake of the day, this one hidden under the rocks, made me backtrack and head out.

Only saw a few people and a couple of dogs. If you bring a dog, I would recommend keeping it on a leash for sure. The first rattlesnake I saw was a couple of miles in and only about 3 feet from the trail. Be careful!

The bugs were out, but not really much of an annoyance. The trail is a bit overgrown in places and I got pretty scratched up, but that was mostly at the end of the trail. On the way back I walked along the other side of the creek and ran across the cement remains of an old foundation, maybe an old homestead? The date "1933" was inscribed in the cement.

The flowers are just starting to come out and the trees are starting to leaf up, so this will be a completely different hike in a couple of weeks. Lots of sunflowers out right now, but that's about it.

This trip report is for the canyon, not the ridge.  There was apparently some very nice work done last fall on the trail, where before it was a tangle of social trails with efforts made to find places to cross the creek.  There are some re-routes up into some scree to avoid some of that - you can follow the orange blazes most of the time.  Also, another project that was underway last fall was the deposition by some agencies of cut timber, dropped by helicopter, into the creek.  This is supposed to help fish habitat but the local beavers must have though Christmas had come early!  The logs are also helpful to find places to cross the creek.  No flowers really yet in the canyon but plenty of birds.  M & F Harrier Hawk, Great Blue Heron, Downy Woodpeckers, flickers, canyon wrens and Bewick's wren, turkey, stellar jays, to name a few.

We ended up choosing Umtanum Ridge because the weather on the west side of the state was looking too ugly.  What a great trail.  Follow the driving directions on this hike description and you will have no problems getting there.  Restrooms at the trailhead are in great condition and parking was no problem.  America The Beautiful pass covers BLM land.

The trail..... Wonderful trail going up the canyon with flowers just starting to come in.  Birds calling, and just a really pleasant hike.  The last 1/2 half mile is straight up the hill and I could see that this would be a difficult hike in really wet weather.  There were muddy spots on the trail, but no major obstacles.

We had cool, perfect weather - only a bit of sprinkles on our way down so we're happy for that.

Spring is still early in Umtanum Canyon: it's barely green and the creek is high. A big difference since last year is the number of logs that have been dropped along the creek to enhance habitat for native fish species (link below). As a side benefit, these logs also enhance creek-crossing opportunities for hikers.

The canyon was mostly quiet, but even on a quiet day it's birdy: soaring male Northern harriers, American kestrels, and lots of red-tailed hawks and turkey vultures. Say's phoebe was a nice surprise. Two active osprey nests along Canyon Road. We also saw two Western gray squirrels as well as extensive clearcutting by beavers and a new dam nearby.

Balsamroot is just beginning to bloom.