Toutle, N. Fork

The North Toutle was fun. It's a fast river flowing at more than five mph. We did just over eleven miles in just under two hours. Most of the action is in the first three or four miles where the river grade is higher. Pretty much back-to-back class two rapids and wave trains. After that the grade lessons a bit and the river hits some wide spots and slows down giving bigger breaks between the rapids.

The water is extremely silty, like grey chocolate milk, so rocks and hazards just under the surface are difficult to spot. Even at the high end of the recommended level in 'A Guide to the Whitewater Rivers of Washington, Second Edition' it was boney and low in spots. The main Toutle gauge at Tower Road was reading 4300 cfs so that puts the N. Toutle around 1900 cfs and I wouldn't want to run it much less than that.

*Hazardous Log in play. * All the wood and stumps were easy to see except one log that almost got us. The river splits around an island just past the 1900Rd Bridge. (Google Maps calls it the 1901 Road but the street sign on the ground said 1900 Rd.). We chose the left channel for no particular reason, which was the wrong choice. After a couple bends the channel narrows through a choke point where there is an old concrete bridge abutment on river left with a log trapped on it spanning most of the channel. We barely saw the log in time and Charles was able to just squeeze past the log on river right, but I was too far left so I had to try to boof over the center of the log where there was a bit of poor over. I managed to make it over but flipped on the other side and went for a little swim for a few seconds until I could jump back in my packraft. Recommend taking the right channel after the bridge.

As the river gets closer to the takeout it fans out through some big sand/ash bars and has lots and lots of channels around islands and wood piles. All easy to see but you never really know how deep they are because some aren't very deep at all.

Overall, a nice class two river with plenty of speed and action to keep you on your toes. And if you're lucky you’ll see the rivers otters.