Elwha

With the new bridge and construction there is an easy take out access on river left just above the old bridge. Not sure how well River right works now with the construction debris.

In 2024 Washington DOT opened the new Elwha River Bridge on Highway 101. The pilings of the old bridge were sitting on top of alluvial material and the bridge had to be replaced. American Whitewater advocated for an area to park and a place to access the river at the site of the old Elwha Resort where the bridge is located had a take out for rafters at the head of the former reservoir.

From Tom Diegel

Hiked up from the Madison Falls TH up the road, onto the bypass trail, back to the road, across on the bridge to RL, and up to the old dam site.  Nice view into the gorge, and then there's a small trail that goes for another 3/4 of a mile into the old reservoir bottoms and an obvious spot to walk over to the river's edge.  The rapid at the old dam site is fun and kinda sporty class 4ish.  There's a terrible log jam a ways downriver, but you can scout a nice takeout above it from where the bypass trail comes back to the road.  It's nice swiftwater back to the Madison Falls TH, where you can take out (a quick run) or carry on down into the nice lower section.

This is a fun packraft trip with easy logistics. The Madison Falls Trailhead was busy on a Thursday morning with people enjoying the river and hiking or biking up the road. We hiked up the road and took the bypass trail where the river has cut through the road on the approximately 4 mile hike up to the Glines Canyon Dam site. After checking out the overlook at footprint of the former reservoir, we backtracked to the river access located at the historic Glines Canyon Powerhouse.

It took a little over an hour to hike up to the Glines Canyon dam site, an hour to experience the place and then inflate our boats, and about an hour and a half to float back down to the access at the gage station.

It was a good flow for the run but we had to exercise caution as we approached the segment where the old campground was located and the river has cut through the road prism. We encountered several channel-spanning trees in this section that required a portage. These were the only major wood hazards on the run although there were several other places where caution is warrnted with wood along the sides and in some cases extending into the main current.

The access road to the put in at Glines Canyon washed out (a couple of years ago) and is still gated. No vehicle access upstream of Madison Falls Trailhead. ~3.5 road-miles from the gate to the put-in from what I can tell.

Packrafted from the old powerhouse site to Madison Falls TH on 1/9/2022. Beautiful run, cool seeing the river reclaim its floodplain, and had fun weaving our way down the rapids above the Altair bridge.

The road is closed beyond the Madison falls TH. It's a four mile hike from the TH to the old powerhouse site. Most of it is road walking with the exception of a mile of some pretty hiking trail that takes you by some impressive old growth trees.

We did have a half mile long portage on the way down. The river splits near the upstream road washout where the bypass trail ends. The left channel was almost entirely dewatered at 2000cfs. The right channel, which you can see as you hike the bypass trail, had a few riverwide strainers. We chose to hike the left channel's dried out riverbed until another creek came in that contributed just enough water to scrape our way down to where the right channel reconnected. Next time, we may try portaging along the old section of road stranded by the two washouts.

Site visit to view Elwha River access sites.

Removal of Glines Canyon Dam underway

Exploring Glines Canyon prior to dam removal.