Hiked here with my dog on an early Sunday morning to avoid the heat. Hello Seattle summer! Just to note the directions to the trail head say "shortly turn right on RD112" well it is not shortly and the road was closed before the turn so had to detour a bit around. Recommend using GPS if the road is closed. Nice shady hike. Only passed 3 other people. We went through the trail to Far County Look-out and back. Roundtrip just about 4 miles.

The Licorice Fern Trail is like Cougar Mountain's secret back door - a winding little trail sneaking up to the mountain through a deep ravine. No doghair replant forest here - just what mother nature has deemed fit to let grow after the old growth cedars were logged years ago. It's been around since before Mr. Manning's Footsore 1, but just never garnered the popularity that some other trails have. Walked the trail early Sunday. Parking is on the right (east) side of SE 112th St just after making the sharp left hand turn with room for 8-10 cars. The trailhead is nicely planted on both sides by the local land owners - walk 50 yards due east along the access easement to find the official trail signage. The trails are in great shape. Caution when crossing SE Licorice Way is important as noted in previous reports as cars can come flying down the hill and there is limited sight distance. The trail starts back up on the other side of the guardrail a couple hundred yards west. We added a lollipop loop after reaching the end of Licorice Fern continuing along Indian Trail, right on Far Country then Shy bear, then right on Deceiver past Doughty Falls to Shy Bear Pass, back around on Shy Bear trail and retraced our steps back down Licorice Fern to the trail head. Total distance with the additional loop is just over 8 miles and about 900' net vertical, (though with quite a bit of up/down. )The views off both Far Country Lookout and Long View Peak are just about grown over but still worth taking a look at. Doughty Falls has a fair amount of water going over after the recent rain. The next time you want to wander around Cougar Mt and are tired of Red Town, try this instead.

Beautiful mossy hike with a couple cute log bridges to cross. One point brings you to a major road to cross - be careful crossing - then a sign marks the way to the left to continue the trail. It's easy to find, but I was confused when I came to the road not too far into the hike. The trail takes you to a cute little waterfall, if you can call it that, but it is a beautiful area. You can continue on to the "lookout". Lookout was mediocre in my opinion, but it's always nice to feel like you've reached some kind of summit at the end of a hike! Some roots in the trail, overall not too difficult.

We started at the lower trailhead off of SE 112th St. It is a lovely undulating trail. There were 3 small trees to step over. I'm sure we did more than the 400 feet elevation gain the books say with all the ups and downs. The creeks had water flowing for a pretty sound along with some bird songs. The Far Country Falls was pretty with lots of moss on boulders and logs. (There was no water over the falls when we last came in July 2014.) With no leaves on the trees yet, there is a small view at Far Country Viewpoint. A bench there made a nice place for lunch and turn around.