Quinault, North Fork

Packrafted the NF of the Quinault from Kimta Creek down to the Quinault bridge this past weekend, 4/4/25-4/6/25. Spent a couple nights at the lovely Wolf Bar Camp. Flows were 2900cfs @ Quinault, 1200cfs @ Humptulips, and 1900cfs @ Hoh. Note that the Quinault gauge is at the outflow of the lake, which is not a great indicator of the inflow, so it is useful knowing the levels of some neighboring watersheds. I'd say these flows were a good low-medium level.

The hike in through the Quinault rainforest was beautiful. Everything is blanketed in green. The old growth trees are awe inspiring. There were a couple dozen blow downs, but nothing difficult. There are a couple creek crossings at Wild Rose and Elip where water shoes were nice. The bridge at Stalding Creek is technically closed due to a tree that fell on it and damaged it. It is possible to ford that creek as well.

The first mile from Kimta Creek to Elip Creek was intense. The gorge the river cuts is pretty sheer and would be difficult to climb out of. There are several class IV+ drops, a handful of IVs, and a bunch of class IIIs. They are mostly formed by large chunks of polished bedrock wall that have fallen into the river alongside some large boulders. A typical hundred yard sequence would be a class III entry drop, followed in quick succession by a class IV, then by a couple more class IIIs, and then a moving ~30 yard recovery stretch. Gradient is about 100 feet per mile. We managed to scout all the big drops. Only one of the class IV drops was portagable. Thankfully, the run was pretty clean, there were no pieces of wood in play that blocked the entire river. Our flow felt pretty ideal for this stretch. Enough water to open up a few lines, but not too much to get really pushy. Overall, I would only recommend this stretch for solid class IV+ to V paddlers that have the means to scout for wood and climb out of the gorge if necessary.

From Elip Creek to the last gorge just downstream of Wolf Bar Camp, the river mellows to fun class III. Most of these rapids are staircase style drops down boulder bars into a cut bank. There are four beautiful gorges in between meandering river with big open views. This is a great stretch for intermediate paddlers. There are a couple river wide logs in the gorges that we paddled under that could continue to collect wood over time. The second log may be impossible to pass under at medium to high flows. It might be possible to climb over its root ball on river left.

Once past the last gorge below Wolf Bar Camp, the river changes in character again to class II+ braided channels in a dynamic flood plain. This stretch is swift in places with a lot of wood and some funky eddy lines. Our flow would be a good low water cutoff to avoid too much bumping and dragging. We had two easy portages around log jams. There are big views of the surrounding mountains. We spotted a couple families of elk, a couple types of eagles, a wood pecker, and a couple pairs of harlequin ducks. We took out just downstream of the Quinault bridge at the boat ramp on river left.