Hoh

We started on Saturday from the main parking lot and hiking our overnight gear and pack-rafts to Olympus Ranger station put in about 9 miles up the valley. Downstream gauge data had the river at around 1040 cfs. Trip took about 6 hours with gear. Busy camp on Memorial day weekend but the weather was nice. There was one spot in last mile where a tree had fallen making the trail nice and steep and scramble for the better part of 50 feet. Almost zero chances to scout wood on the river from the hiking trail but from reports and noting that the olympic rivers get a lot of wood each season, we had an idea that there would be a few portages. The next morning we woke up and put on the water around 11:00. We had highs in the 60s and were in wetsuits and that was comfortable for the whole day. In total we had 8 separate portages throughout the day and more then 10 'walking the dog' portages where we attached our flip lines to the packrafts and used the water to walk the boats down along the side of the river to avoid nasty strainers/wood and sections that were too shallow to fully paddle down. Splitting the river into 3rd's, the heaviest portage section was the 2nd out of 3 where we had a 1/4 mile hike downstream around 5 mile camp and 3 back-to-back portages shortly after. Consider the weight you bring because you will be carrying your boat frequently. The challenge of this section was navigating braided channels and staying vigilant/scouting wood, but there were a few class I-II little wave-trains that were splashy and fun, and a couple of surf waves. Besides those, the river was absolute beautiful with glacial blue flows and sunshine pretty much the whole day. Didn't see any other paddlers and had the river to ourselves. We took out right at the campground near the visitor center which had orange flagging on river right to designate river access from the campground. Takeout time was at 17:30. Would do again, maybe even from higher up but plan on a full day and lots of walking. 1.1k