Did this hike en route to Thanksgiving dinner and it was a beautiful stroll. There is already snow is the canyon which makes finding the trail difficult but by no means impossible (it also makes for a gorgeous desert winter wonderland scene!). The trail sorta peters out at some point so we climbed up the canyon wall on a pretty well defined trail (steep but short) to watch the sunset. From that bird's eye view we also saw a few people get lost at the same place we did. At one of the forks there's a trail to the left and to the right what looks like a campsite + creek hop. Take the right fork! I imagine this would be more obvious without snow, but the trail to the left runs into some rocks and the correct trail continues after the campsite on the other side of the stream.

I had not read reports on this trail prior to hiking here. Like Xernia in a previous post I found the trail a bit confusing commencing at about 1/2 mile into the trip. There was a fork in the trail and I went left and ended up in extremely brushy conditions with a myriad of dead ends, etc. I almost gave up but pushed on ahead for a short while and eventually came to the main trail. The trail I was on was blocked off if you had approached from the west. I traveled to the end in splendid winter like conditions and easy hiking with absolutely no fear of rattlesnakes (those things give me the creeps as it seems they seldom rattle now to warn of their presence). On my way back I found the correct trail which would have been a right hand turn at the first fork rather than the left that I (and apparently xernia) chose. The correct trail is adjacent to the right hand canyon wall on the way out and is easy to follow, not brushy, and well maintained. A marker at the initial "Y" would have been awesome. Did see a lot of Bighorn Sheep and one that had been freshly killed, apparently by a cougar.

Beautiful crisp sunny fall day. Hiked about three miles up the canyon. No snow but most of the sage brush and prairie grass was covered in a thin frost. Which in the sun was very pretty. Be careful crossing the shallow creek though on the frosty logs and rocks. Looked like you can hike up the narrow canyon on either side of the creek. Saw a herd of mountain sheep across the river a couple of miles before I got the the trail head. Keep in mind that the sun sets early in this narrow canyon. It was a fun desert hike.

I was excited to get out of rainy Seattle and head east to Ellensburg, seeing the forecast predicted sunny skies and warmer weather. The weather ended up being totally perfect and seeing SUN and blue skies for the first time in a while was amazing. I was expecting this trail to be really easy to navigate and to be in great condition based on previous trip reports, but no one seems to have mentioned how confusing the trail is at the very beginning. This was our first time here and we crossed over the suspension bridge from the parking lot, under the railroad tracks and across a shallow creek. From there, things got super confusing. There are no trail markers of any kind, and the trail, if you can call it that, is extremely brushy and overgrown, and hard to follow. There are dozens of way trails that branch off from what seems to be the mail trail, though most seem to connect back to it after a while. The first 1/2 mile of the trail is really confusing. Some sections are extremely eroded and in need of repair. Eventually, you meander to old concrete building foundations with a staircase hidden in the ground. Pretty cool - not sure what this used to be. After you make your way around that area, the trail does seem to become more of an actual trail and is clear and easy to follow from that point. Aside from my frustraton at the first part of the hike, the rest of it was great. We didn't see many people, so we had the quiet and peace of the canyon to ourselves. We didn't know where the turnaround point is (again, no trail markers), so we continued on over and around another creek crossing, past a lone tall pine tree in the rocks, then over a few talus slopes. At that point, the trail seemed to get more confusing so we turned back. Total time on the trail was a little over 3 hours. I think we did the full 6.5 miles as indicated in the trail description. I'd go back, but next time I'll be better prepared with a map of the area. I'd love to figure out how to get up to the trail along the Umtanum ridgeline.

Ethan & I took a hike in Umtanum Canyon on this nice fall day. We hiked up to the second crossing of the creek and then were going to climb up to the buttress that we usually climb to for lunch, but there were some other people up there so climbed to a buttress farther up-canyon. To get there we had to cross a lot of talus which made it much more strenuous than out usual spot. This was compensated for by great views up & down the canyon. We had quite a bit of sun on the way in, but the clouds moved in as we ate. After lunch we headed down a steep, mostly talus chute to the bottom of the canyon and then walked the trail back to the car. There were quite a few other people out, but it never seemed crowded, and though we saw lots of people in hunter orange, we didn't hear a shot. There is still quite a bit of green in the lower canyon, but above the second crossing it is all yellow. It should be very nice here for the next couple of weeks.