Source to Sea

Saturday, January 9th 2010
Dosewallips River, bankfull
Class II-IV
11.7 miles

Welcome back! This is my first post of 2010, and my first river trip of the year. On Friday night Chip and I had made plans to paddle the N. Frk. Tilton, or Yellowjacket creek, but due to the fickle nature of weather systems the rain just didn't go where we had planned. So Chip, Jon, jP and I made a last minute change and decided to paddle on the Eastside of the Oylmpic Peninsula north of Hoodsport. The river that was in our range was the Dosewallips river (pronounced Doe-see-wal-lips), a class II-IV river.
The logistics were easy, drive up Dosewallips Rd. until we arrived at a washout, park the car and hike a short trail around the washout to the put-in. Sounds easy, right? Well like always it ended up being slightly more difficult than we had imagined. We parked the car at the Dosewallips park, where the river flows into Hood Canal, changed into our drysuits, and started driving to the put-in. When we were within a mile of the put-in we arrived at a new washout, but luckily one that could be easily driven through, a bit nerve wracking, but easy enough. After doing a bit of road grading and strategic moving of rocks and aggregate we were back in the car and driving to the top.
At the put-in as we unloaded boats, gear, dogs and girlfriends I discovered a crack in Jons boat.
Me (as I pulled down Jon's boat): "That sucks man, how'd you get that crack"?
Jon: "Crack"!?
Me: "Oooooh, sorry, figured you knew"
Of course the crack was in an inconvenient spot, beneath the seat. So we busted out the Multitools and Swiss Army Knives and began moving the seat, and applying a temporary Duct tape patch to the inside of the hull. "This isn't going to keep me dry" Jon proclaimed, "it might" I replyed with the most supportive voice I could muster.
After fixing everything we loaded our boats onto our shoulder and began the relatively easy one-mile-or-so hike up and around to the road again. The trail was a well maintained and steep, with switchbacks comparable to the French Pyrenees. Once back on the Forest Service Rd. we walked to the first rapid that was a solid class IV called "The Maze".
As soon as I looked at it I didn't have a good feeling about it. The moves were well within my skill level but the consequences were not to my liking. The main line at the bottom of the rapid was obscured by a significant amount of wood, four or five trees creating a spider web of pain. There was a line to the right of all of this, but failure to execute the move would have resulted in an elevated blood pressure that I simply did not want any part of. About 4/5ths of the water was pushing toward the woody feature and getting to the good water was going to be troublesome, so Jon, Chip, and I opted to walk the drop and set safety for jP. JP ran it with style, and we continued our way down stream.
After this rapid the river calmed down significantly, turning into class II wave trains, and the occasional hole. For the next nine or so miles the nature of the river consisted of Class II wave trains punctuated every mile or so with a class III rapid. The class III's were all easily boat scoutable and fun. The weather was ideal for paddling, and actually unseasonably warm, about 50-60 degrees, with partly blue skies and the occasional sunny patch. Over the course of the run we ran into two wood portages in class II rapids, easy to walk around and more inconvenient than dangerous.
Before we reached Hood Canal there was a short gorge that was really spectacular, about a 1/4 mile long with 3 or so S-turns that created cool caves and swirly water and had two class III rapids in them. This trip was also the first time I have paddled a river that lead into the sea (technically Puget Sound, but it was salt water). We all agreed that it was pretty cool just having the opportunity to do something like that. As we spilled out into the Canal there were several Bald Eagles perched on drift wood eating something they had most likely stolen from another predator. Despite their dumb nature they sure are good lookin' birds.
All-in-all it was a really fun trip with a good group of guys, the river was really low key but the atmosphere of the trip made up for that. I don't think I'll go back to the Dosewallips river again anytime soon, but I'm glad that we went. I was able to start off the new year with a Personal First Decent, not bad.