Licorice Fern Trail, Indian Trail, Quarry & Coal Creek Falls — Monday, Jan. 19, 2026

Cougar Mountain Regional Park was busy on this Martin Luther King Monday.  My hiking group started from the lower Licorice Fern trailhead at 9:00AM. It was 33 degrees with clear blue skies. This is one of the lesser used Th’s for Cougar Mtn.  There is no toilet here so plan ahead. This whole lower trail section has been updated with stairs in critical areas and widened throughout in the last 1 1/2 years.  Great improvements, thanks Trail workers and volunteers. Our entire route was saturated, well drained soil. At  1.2 miles the trail crosses a road in the shade and that was a skating rink from early morning black ice.  Hiking poles stopped a couple in my group from taking a tumble.  We followed Licorice Fern, Indian, Quarry and Coal Creek Falls trails to  Coal Creek Falls for a 6.9 mile out and back hike.  Coal Creek falls was the most crowded  area and all trail users were courteous by stepping off to allow faster hikers to pass by.  Both Far Country and Coal Creek had great water flows.  All the underbrush was green everywhere you looked with prominent patches of moss and licorice ferns. We saw a couple chestnut back chickadees, juncos and towhees throughout our hike.  It felt great to have the suns rays streaming down through the deciduous trees throughout.  Hikers were heading up the trail when we arrived back to our vehicles  just after 2:00.  Another fantastic day out in nature with friends.