We arrived at the Wallace Falls Park parking lot at about 7:45AM, and there was lots of parking still available in the main lot.  When we left at 12:15pm the lot was full and cars were parked quite a ways down the road outside the park.  The bathrooms were cleaned and well stocked.

The trail is in great condition, BUT, there is way too much toilet paper right on the side of the trail!  Don't be that person.  Pack along a zip lock bag and put your toilet paper in there and pack it out to the garbage cans or bathrooms at the trailhead.  Here's is WTA info on how to leave no trace when you have to go in the woods:

https://www.wta.org/go-outside/trail-smarts/how-to/how-to-poop-in-the-woods

Went to the middle falls lookout point. Great hike not too challenging but a good workout. First section lots of blackberries (not ripe yet), thimble berries, salal. Crazy amounts of ripe huckleberries everywhere once you get in the woods. Not a lot of mushrooms since it's been pretty dry but we did see a few, including some coral mushrooms near one of the streams. Between the lower and middle falls looks like it would be a good mushroom spot after a rain.

Arrived at the Wallace falls lot around 1pm on a Wednesday- busy but still plenty of parking spots. Headed up to the upper falls via the woody trail, about an hour up passing maybe 20 people heading down. The trail is well maintained but steep with lots of steps, however it is shady for much of the hike. From the upper falls I took the DNR road to Wallace lake, mostly flat and sunny - only saw one work vehicle the entire 2.5 miles. *note - the .5 mile connecting the upper falls to the DNR road is very rocky and rooted, but marked subtly by gray tree markers.

Wallace Lake is pretty though there’s not a lot of spots to sit right on the water. I walked to the other end looking for Pebble Beach but couldn’t seem to find it.

On the way down I took the Greg Ball trail to connect back with the woody trail back down to the now nearly empty parking lot. My watch tracked 4 hours, 10.7 miles, and 1750 elevation gained for the whole trip.

We arrived at the Wallace Falls parking around 3 PM on a Thursday afternoon. There was plenty of parking, which is not always the case on the weekends. We checked in at the ranger station for permits. This was a last-minute trip, so we had called the day before to reserve spots at Jay Lake, and were lucky to hear back the next morning. For spots at Wallace Lake, it would probably be better to call earlier. The ranger was very helpful with providing directions to the lake, and even sent us up with two rolls of TP to restock the biffy. 

Despite the ranger's detailed instructions, signs with maps, and written directions we had brought, we somehow managed to take a wrong turn at the beginning and ended up hiking most of the way up the DNR road. At the first intersection of the trail with the sign "DNR road to Wallace Lake," go to the right to reach the intersection for the Greg Ball trail. Though it added 2-3 extra miles and was much more exposed to the sun, the DNR road was surprisingly beautiful with views of the surrounding mountains framed by foxglove and daisies. It worked out as a great loop because we were able to take the Greg Ball trail back down the next day. In the future, I would do the loop the opposite way to get the shady trail on the way up and the views on the way down. 

We made it to the campsite at Jay Lake in around 4 hours. This could have been done more quickly, but we took frequent breaks for the ripe salmon and huckleberries along the trail. The trail to Jay Lake itself is slightly overgrown. In spots where it was overgrown with stinging nettles and devil's club (nature's toilet paper), it would have been nice to be wearing pants. The campsites at Jay Lake are in amazing condition! The tent pads were mostly clear, though a little small. We had a 3-person tent and had to stake it outside the box, but that was not a big deal. The water access is not great and would strongly recommend filtering any drinking water at Wallace Lake. We would also strongly recommend bug spray as the mosquitos and biting flies were having a buffet while we made dinner.

The biffy is a composting toilet. It is by far the nicest backcountry bathroom I have ever seen: it smells like pine wood shavings; it has a stocked hand sanitizer dispenser; and it now has five rolls of toilet paper. The third cool campsite amenity was the bear bucket. I had never heard of this before, and we had trouble finding it in the dark as we were expecting a box on the ground. Luckily, we had brought a bear can anyways, so our breakfast burritos were safe. The bear bucket is past the biffy, following the footpath to the right. It is a white gallon bucket suspended above the ground by a pulley system.

Going down the next day, the Greg Ball trail was surrounded by huckleberries. By snacking along the way, we effectively doubled the time it took to get back to the parking lot. The most shocking part of this hike was that we ran into so few groups. Given the popularity of the Wallace Falls trail, it was very surprising that we ran into only four groups in two days. 

You've been to the Falls, so why not hike to the lake. The Greg Ball trail (named after an early WTA volunteer) is a beautiful trail that follows the N Fork Wallace River thru lush green forest. The elevation is steady, but spread out and IMHO not as steep as the Falls to Lake route. There are several benches to rest on and a couple of new bridges. I didn't see any saprophytes today, we must have been a bit early, usually there is a nice variety.  The trail was bit muddy in spots, as expected, with one small blowdown, but still in great shape. Once you reach the lake, keep going along the path all along the lake and look for a bit of gravel, some stairs going down to the lake where there is a nice lunch bench. Today we got to enjoy it as there were very few people on the trail, a big plus! We arrived a little after 8, 3rd car in the lot. It took us about 3 hrs or so to get to the lunch spot and about as much to get back. Just a word about gaging your time, the trail runner types are going to post trip reports with a lot less time, we are the hiking grandmas and we move at a slow but steady pace. Check out my report on Deception Creek and then check out the one by Stuke Stowe, yeah that's the difference. What kind of hiker are you? Sadly we had to pack out some orange peels scattered about the lunch bench. Hey I had an orange, but I didn't leave mine there, pack it in, pack it out, and there's a trash can in the composting toilet. Lots of people coming in on our way out the Woody trail, glad we didn't go to the Falls!