Skykomish

Rafted this route on April 20th 2015, continuing down to the Sultan
River confluence (~another 8 miles of mellower but really pretty Class I water, described http://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/River/view/river-detail/2210/). Flow was 2950. We did the trip by packraft. Once we
were in the water (e.g., not counting the setup time), the trip took 3.5 hours for the ~10 miles,
with us paddling most of the time (we needed to make it to Sultan in time to get one of our party
to the airport). This section itself only took some 40-45 minutes to complete. =====
For the put-in, we parked at the highway pullout next to the railway bridge, just as described here. This
was a Monday, so we were the only car there. It was a sunny day, so the walk down to the river
was not muddy at all, and no problem with the super-portable packrafts. For takeout, since we wanted to raft all the way to Sultan, we left a car there at a parking lot that required the Discover Pass (though, note that we did not see a place to purchase one, if we hadn't had ours). For those who want to take out at Big Eddy, which is the official stop of this route, there is a fee box (and I think it was also Discover Pass) ===== The first 2.5 miles (the section of river described here) was good fun, lots of class II rapids that soaked us when splashing us, but did not seem to be much risk for overturning the packrafts (not sure about a kayak -- packrafts are generally much more stable).
While we didn't necessarily *want* to swim, there were no fallen trees or log jams anywhere, so
even if we had overturned, it didn't look too dangerous.===== From Big Eddy, the river mellowed. The views of
the mountains were excellent, and the river flows through a remote section that only comes towards
the road and civilization near Gold Bar and Sultan. See my trip report at http://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/River/view/river-detail/2210/ for more information on that section.