Matheny Creek

We caught a dip in the hydrograph between storms over Thanksgiving weekend and found great flows for Lower Matheny Creek. Flow on the Queets was 10,400 cfs at 10am and 10,300 cfs at 1pm. The big gage rock visible from the FR 21 Bridge had a few inches showing and the smaller gage rock to the left was covered. We opted for the put-in at the Hook Branch on Middle Matheny and hiked in there to enjoy a few miles of great class III before running the Lower. Everything was clean with the exception of a few pieces of wood in play that were easily avoided. We were able to duck under the log at the take-out bridge. We were able to boat scout everything. Boaters on the trip included Tom O'Keefe, Omar Jepperson, Boris Startsev, and Leanna Girton.

Ran it 12/12/18 with 15,000 cfs and dropping. The log jam from 2016 is now passable on the left. As you pass, there is still one river-wide log that was about 6-7 feet above river level. This may become an issue at extremely high water. Other than that, no hazards.

11/20/16, 8000cfs Queets. we were able to catch a blind 1 boat eddy far river left downstream of a large rock wall, and portage from there, rather than catch the first visible eddy from upstream. What you can not see from this picture, is a large root ball downstream of what otherwise looks like a clean ledge.

11/20/2016, 8000cfs on queets

11/20/2016, 8000 queets. Just behind the small rock wall on river left there was a 1-boat eddy that can be caught to make the portage shorter. But there is no way to clearly see it from upstream. Below that eddy is a drop that leads into a root ball (also not visible from upstream in this pic)

Run is clean as on 11/5/15.

A typical nice Class III on lower Matheny.