Upper Dungeness Trailhead - Hiking area in Quilcene - , USA

The Upper Dungeness trail is a really beautiful hike with a few choice camp sites along the way. The trails are very well maintained and very easy to navigate. The drive in is long and bumpy. So long as you drive carefully over the potholes most vehicles can make it without issue (I drive a little hybrid hatchback and did just fine). The parking area seemed to have a decent amount of spaces available when we arrived around 11a. Note that a NW Forest pass is required.

The road leading up here can be very narrow in certain spots. I did notice that most cars did not obey the speed limit and ended up on our side of the gravel road, while trying to slow down. Hence I advise driving with caution. They are two parking lots one directly in front of the trailhead, and another just across the bridge. There are lots of spaces and a pit toilet available. The trail starts off with a gentle incline, and then levels out for the next mile till reaching the forest boundary. The stream was flowing very well in August, I have filtered water from here, as it is very fast flowing. This trailhead is the start for many hikes and can get busy.

We loved the trail along the river. The trail was easy and well kept. The forest was also maintained (lots of trees limbed high) but still felt you were out in nature and not in a park. The river is beautiful. It's a nice place to sit and relax, picnic or camp. You can go on to do the "Burn" trail if you want a challenge.

This is a beautiful trail, family and dog friendly, that has been recently cleared and maintained by the WTA. Gentle grade through old growth forest that leads to Camp Handy and beyond, or you can turn right at 1 mile and head into Royal Basin.

Absolutely gorgeous! We walked a bit, had lunch, then found the restroom across the bridge.

Absolutely fantastic way to get out into nature. The parking is a little crowded and bathrooms were still shut down but otherwise the woods are as they always are.

Leads to both Dungenous and Royal Basin hikes. Very close to Sequim.

Saturday September 17th I traveled to the upper dungeonness trailhead to make a recon trip up past camp handy into a Heather Meadows. The plan was to assess hazard trees at camp handy and then move up into Heather Meadows and assess the the Canadian thistle issue up there. The trailhead was full of oil vehicles so I backed the horse trailer right straight up the middle not to block anybody in. There are several day hikers going in I found characters that were going to go up to goat lake and I wish them well I told him to stay on the right hand side of the stream other ways I get in some pretty cliffy stuff. The thistles in the upper Dungeness of Heather Creek metal area are doing really good we we managed to subdue their their expansion quite a bit and now they're just individual plants here and there however down by camp handy on the margins of the meadow in front of campaign the there's a pretty good Canadian thistle invasion there that needs to be addressed next season. Interesting thing about the trailhead the restroom was there everybody's tried different ways of breaking the locks on it and there was no TP in the restroom and so I left people a roll of TP. The trail itself is a fairly good shape I didn't notice that oh about two and a half maybe 3/10 of a mile up from the trailhead a root wad is tearing out the edge of the trail so we need to go in next season and put a couple of curb lugs in there I didn't see any local rock to build a short rock wall it'll need to be about at least 10 ft long. I ran out of time yesterday on the horse ride and I didn't have a chance to assess the numerous hazard trees right around camp Andy those grandfurs need to be reduced so they're not going to fall down on all this left in the now is the car is rotted out they just have a rind around the outside and that makes kind of a nasty situation.