Elwha

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.