Nisene Marks backpacking report:

The backwoods are very nice, typical thick dense redwood forest, little creeks in steep thick dark canyons (don't try to do a lot of river walking unless you're ready for a real adventure!), nice views in a few places, but it's mostly dense forest. The forest is recovering nicely from being clear-cut years ago, and there's a lot of fairy rings, some with 10+ new trees (actual tree-size trunks) sprouting up from around giant stumps.

Lotsa mountain bikers too.

The trail camp leaves a lot to be desired. It has an outhouse, and it's a perfectly decent campsite, it's just that it's really nothing special, some of the sites are too close together, the place could use some maintenance attention, but most importantly, THERE'S NO WATER! The map I had showed a stream within 0.5 mile, but there was no stream to be found, just a stagnant puddle near a culvert 1 mile DOWNHILL from the campsite. It's just not a good place for a camp. I figured with all the recent rains there should be some running water somewhere up there, at least a trickle coming out of the side of a roadcut, but not even that.

I had a visitor in the middle of the night, something dog-sized, maybe a pig or coyote or deer? It wouldn't run away even after I shone the light and threw branches at it, it just waited for me to calm down, turn off the light, and then it started moving around again. We carried on this way for about an hour until I just got tired and fell back asleep. The place is pretty wild at night because even though there's a lot of day use, people don't camp there much.

I didn't make the hike from the camp to the Five Finger Falls, but I did go to the Loma Prieta Earthquake epicenter. There's a sign and a buncha trees.

Again, not so great for backpacking, but it's a great place for long dayhikes.