Bacon Creek

78 deg day early May, Bacon melted just enough on a beauty of a day! One tree about 1/2 mi from the put in, would be a portage at higher water.

What an enchanting little river! All the twists and turns through forested constrictions and open braided sections with mountain views will keep you wondering what's around the riverbend. The approachable class 3 nature of the run makes it suitable for many. But as always, with small, forested rivers, be prepared for wood.

Thanks to whoever cut the trail down to the river! Well done.

The run was pretty clean of wood. There was one log jam the current pushes towards with passage on the right. Alternatively you could just portage it via a cobble bar. There was one small log spanning a channel a couple hundred yards above the take out that we portaged around. Current was calm above the log.

We did encounter a black bear swimming across the river! I guess he wanted some Bacon too!

Flow was low at 450 cfs, but only bumped rock a couple times on some of the cobble bar braids. Could probably run it a bit lower without much dragging. Easy first time flow for the run.

This is a great run for anyone that enjoys exploring intimate little rivers!

Near the end of the run is one more large class III rapid

The drop at the top hike in point

This is a view standing on the last real rapid in the cascades. The full view and scale is hard to appreciate with the largest drop just visable in the image.

See the description on the general tab.

After the larger watefall and rock jumbles the river is still a solid class IV

The cascading rapids that start soon after the birdge finally end here at a rocky ramp toward a big boulder. This is the last large rapid for a mile.

A view of the rocks and rapids from the road access at the top

I was at the Bacon at 1000 cfs this weekend and the recent flood moved the gravel near the gage. The run was very low but showing as too high.  Not sure the gage is correct.

I did a foot scout 08/2008 of the first rapids (not sure if that is no two alike or baconator). Anyway, the rapid has cleaned out a bit (I was with Nick in 04 when he posted earlier to the run description). There is still some wood in play and some very tight spots. The rapid is class 5, but runnable. Just make sure to scout. There are some dead end routes you would NOT want to go into. You could portage this first rapid too. The stuff downstream looked clean and fun.

View of Bacon Creek just upstream of the Skagit Confluence at low flows.