My wife and our two dogs and I set out to ride this trail as a first bikepacking adventure.  We were excited about the river crossings, not disuaded by them. 

The first mile or so of the trail is beautiful, rolling single-track.  After that mile, the trail drops steeply down to the river valley.  The first river fording was only thigh deep at most and we crossed easily.  A beautiful, though rocky, meadow followed soon afterward, then the trail shelter, and then the second river fording.  Again, we crossed without a problem. 

Up to this point on the trail, there had been a few blow-downs and I had used the machete I'd brought to do my best to clear the trail, or at least make it as passable as possible.  Shortly after the second river fording, however, we ran into a whole new problem.  The local sticker-bushes, berries of some kind and devil's club, have overgrown much of the trail.  Once again, I used the machete to clear a path through what we'd hoped to be a small section of the trail.  After approximately 30 feet of clearing the trail, we made it to a small clearing, but saw more overgrown trail up ahead.  By that time it was 6:30pm, so we decided to scout ahead and see how far the overgrowth went.  It went on for easily 100 or more feet, so we decided to cut our losses and head back across the second river fording to the nice meadow and stay the night there. 

It was a beautiful night!  A local downed and dead, dry tree provided plenty of wood for a nice campfire and the dogs had all the sticks they could hope to chew.  It was a beautiful escape and we look forward to trying it again, probably later in the season, though, when the trail will hopefully be more passable.