Humptulips, E. Fork

We were 4 packrafters on a Mountaineers trip, and none of us had done this river, so this was a scouting mission. It's now my favorite river! Beautiful gorges, crystal clear water, fun pool drop rapids. We portaged twice for wood, twice for drops that were too big for us, and we walked a few shallow areas, but despite it being nearly 50cfs lower than the recommended, we had a great time. We decided that 450 should be the lowest that packrafts should do it, though.

The Falls are near the end of this run (before the bridge that marks the start of the lower gorge run). There are two drops- the first of which we could have run if there hadn't been an inconvenient tree in the middle of it. The second drop is vertically 5 or 6 feet with a big hole at the bottom- well over our skill level to attempt. We portaged on river right.

We left a car at the locked gate on E. Humptulips Rd (47.240245, -123.848956), which is about 1/2 mile walk up from the takeout at Boise Bridge. We parked at the electrical box at mile 12.6 on FR22 and made the easy walk through the woods to the river. We had scouted the bridge at mile 13 that is supposedly a put-in for this stretch, but we couldn't figure out how to get down to the river from there.

We spent about 6 hours on the river. I'm sure that would have been shortened if we'd had more water. There were a lot of very flat sections that were pretty, but slow. I can't wait to go back and see what it's like at higher flows.