High water over the weekend has changed a few things on Pilchuck Creek.

UPPER:

- The rapid on the first major left hand bend that had wood is now clean. The wood shifted parallel to flow on river right leaving plenty of room to run left or eddy hop down the right.

 

-There is a new river wide tree about 100 yards below the above mentioned rapid. It’s not in a rapid and I was able to sneak far left at 4.2 Ft without getting out of my boat. This one will be there for a while.

 

-The river wide log between the bridge and falls also shifted parallel to the flow on river right.  

 

MIDDLE:

-This one is tough to describe because I don't know what people call the rapid. It's the only bigger rapid not in one of the canyons on the middle. It previously had two dead pines sticking out over it sort of like field goals. Most of the runout piles up on a boulder in the center right. Anyway, this rapid now has a riverwide log across the top and a very large tree has fallen in below the river wide log sticking into the rapid from river left. The rapid has a line open if you limbo the riverwide and then move right. At higher flows you may not be able to limbo the riverwide and it would be just below the surface of the water. This one is worth a look.

 

It's also worth mentioning the bridge construction affect on access. They were running loads of cement through the road that is our typical takeout (where the loader is usually parked). I talked to someone and he recommended that boaters park in the huge gravel lot just before the bridge if you are coming from Arlington. This is a staging area for their trucks and if we park on the very edge of the lot out of the way they don't mind if we park there. Of course, this is if you are boating on weekdays; weekends we can use the old spot.

 

I am bumping this thread to the top because the Pilchuck is running today (this morning anyway) and in all likelyhood will run again this week. It will definitely be on the higher side of good later in the week based on the forecast.

Ran the Middle Pilchuck today with my girlfriend. We had never done that stretch before and thought it was awesome. Looking at the graph probably in there between 1200-1100. Every thing went but there was a lot of wood around and much of it seems like it could shift pretty easily. On the Middle Pilchuck page the most recent hazard info describes a river wide log that was kayaked over. I think that log has broken off and left a wide center channel. One of the bigger rapids at the end has had trees fall into the river from both sides and has log spanning the river. The rapid is steeper and I could see the potential for other pieces of wood hanging up there. It went fine down the center moving right but probably deserves a scout on river left. Also there is some wood caught up on river right, around the corner from the falls. Its easy to avoid in your boat but a swim at the falls it might come into play. Can be seen from the portage trail next to the falls river right. Really fun class 3+ stretch

im going to write a lot.

joeskayak, i posted a picture of the rock on the facebook Seattle whitewater page. I can send you a copy if that's better. Stick was at 4.2' when we got to the bottom. The picture was taken before we put on so put an asterix next to it and imagine a little more rock showing. I'm calling today the medium side of medium. The flow for the picture is about 1800-2000 and I'll type a big paragraph out to tell you why.

I haven't seen anyone mention the gage lag and maybe its a no brainer for those familiar with this drainage. We put on at noon today and the gage recorded ~2800 when we checked once we got off. The group consensus was there was no more than 2000. The gage is about 4-5 miles downstream of the takeout, about 14 miles total from the put-in for the upper, probably more if I took pride if my google earthing. If you were to do some math with water velocity and stuff you might deduce that it takes about 6 hours for the water to make its way from the top to bottom, though I'm not out there with leaves and a stopwatch. Anyways, the point I'm making, and I haven't seen made, is that when you use the gage you need to extrapolate your hydrograph slope out 6+ hours to approximate how fat and juicy your pilchuck will be in real-time when you put on.

Today it looked like it was falling at about 150 cfs / hr max. With 6 hours travel time that puts our 2800 gage flow down to 2200. I have no idea how fast the water is traveling down near the confluence so I'm probably being pretty conservative, putting us even closer to the eye-balled 2000 number. Of course all bets go out the window when creek suddenly plateaus and you don't know until the DOE updates 3 hours later. Right now the gage reads about 2050 cfs for 5:00pm. This means that 2050 happened around around 11am. Sounds about right. One more less relevant point of comparison, the north fork stilly gage plateaued at about 9 am this morning, the pilchuck at  5am (gage says 11). Just thinking about other ways to see the plateau while waiting for a gage update. Be interesting to go back and compare over a few water years.

Finally..! To those I hear that stuck a raft in a tree on the upper, it's no where to be seen. No new wood in play. Great day.

Thanks for the great update! Yeah the Pilchuck is a tricky one... and it must be dropping fast because 4.2 on the stick usually relates to a flow in the teens, not over  2k. And I got the pic... thanks!

First draft of the rock gage photo guide is up....

http://professorpaddle.com/media/photoview.asp?File_Id=7955






Edited by JoesKayak - 12 Mar 2014 at 10:57pm

Also thanks to who ever cut the logs out from the river right side of the takeout bridge. I would like to purchase you a malted beverage, sirs or
Ma'am.

It's still in at a low level today. 1pm meetup for a quick run?

Edited by jonlcrain - 18 Mar 2014 at 11:04am

There's some juice in the Pilchuck... Anyone else keepin' an eye on the gague for Sunday?

Jon, you looking at the Upper and Middle, or just Upper?

Nah, upper is more fun than the middle. I was just trying to find out so I can talk myself into going all the way up there today. Any idea on flows? Only time I've paddled it, the stick gauge was at 4.15.