Upper and Middle Pilchuck Creek III-IV+

Chipper called me this morning - "Pilchuck is running, we're going to run it". Well...I hadn't be in my boat for three weeks, when I was back in DC and ran the Potomac. Before then, it had been about 6 weeks since I ran the Foss. So, I wasn't exactly on my game. But, whatever, I had to live up to my new years resolution of getting out more! And Pilchuck was notorious for being hard to catch, needing a ton of rain to bring up. The region's rivers were just recovering from the devastating high water the week before and we were hoping the wood situation (7+ mandatory portages reported from the last folks to run it) had cleared up some.

We geared up at the takeout and headed upstream, hitting 2-3 feet of snow pretty quickly. The parking situation at the putin was interesting - 2-5 feet of plowed snow from the road prevented us from finding an easy way to the river, and we ended up sliding down the snow sketchily to the river bank.

Once on the water, I realized this run was absolutely perfect run for tuning up my rusty skills. Totally continuous class III with interspersed class IV sections, waves, ledges, holes, boulder gardens. It was all there, and I was feeling good in minutes. There was a ton of wood that was kind of in play everywhere but nothing that needed to be portaged. The upper went by quickly, with only two really memorable bits. One rapid was split by a island with the main flow going straight into a big logjam piled on the upstream side of the island. I eddied out on the wrong side of the river, and had to pull off a sketchy upstream ferry with my back to the wood. The other notable rapid was a long class III-III+ rapid that ended in a big diagonal ledge that sent me out in a huge stern ender. Good times!

The scenery turned incredible once we headed into the Middle Pilchuck section. Deep mossy basalt gorge that the Bennett book says is reminiscent of the Olympic peninsula. The best drop on the run came up quickly - a 15' waterfall with several lines. The scout eddy was small and there was a lot of us so I ended up just hanging out in my boat, receiving some verbal beta, and dropping it blind.

Photo by Jeff Dwyer

Good times!!! It was a little off vert and I penciled a bit but recovered fine. Everyone had great lines. The rest of the run was bigwater III+ to IV with no portages. Beautiful waterfalls cascaded here and there into the canyon, and I saw a huge bald eagle in a tree high above the river. We got to the takeout and all of us couldn't stop talking about how awesome this run is. Utterly fantastic day on the water. This run would be a classic if it ran more, and didn't collect as much wood, but we were extremely lucky to have a portage-free descent.