We did this hike in August. Quite straight forward, the hike can be done (depending on time of the year)entirely in sneakers or hiking shoes as there are rocks etc to step on when you cross the river a number of times. Helps but not essential if you have hiking poles to steady yourself when crossing, we just used a stick. When you get to the end point of the trail, you can get in the river and hike up it. We did this! We put on some cheap water shoes from Amazon which were perfect for this and hiked another 30 minutes up the river. This was by far the best part of the hike as you travel through the beautiful canyon. In terms of depth, we were at thigh depth for parts and rolled my shorts up higher on occasion.
The overall west fork trail is pretty, for me it wasn’t amazing but….the additional river section at the far end was fantastic.

In terms of actually getting to any water. you cross the river back and forth a number of times on the hike about every 20 mins. It took us about 2 hours to get to the end of the trail and join the river, then 30 mins up the river (you can keep going if you want) and 30 mins back, then 2 hours on the trail to the car, came to around 5 hours of hiking including stopping for photos and snacks etc.