The trail has almost completely grown over in most spots. It disappeared rather quickly on the way up .... overgrowth and downed/cut trees impede you most of the way. A machete would have been no help at all.

After a short while, we abandoned the trail on the way up. We figured we'd try and find the trail again once at the top, and we did, but it was not easy to follow on the way down. There are faint red blazes (bad for the red/green color-blinded like myself) and faint blue blazes.

I saw none of these on the way up. The trail pretty much ended about 1/3 of the way down. We were able to follow the stream back to where we started and then the Fire Tower road trail.