Whitewater Packraft - Skykomish River: Big Eddy to Monroe

This trip began with a decision - we could put in at the more technically difficult Railroad Bridge or the technically easier Big Eddy, before floating to Sultan either way. The flows (5700 CFS) were much above what was advised for Railroad Bridge but we went to take a look at the first rapid anyways - it looked like clean, runnable class III. Our group had the appropriate skills and experience for class III. Perhaps the advice was wrong? The group wanted to try the extra difficulty but we all also recognized that we had previously planned not to run Railroad Bridge if it was at high flow, and we made the conservative decision to stick with our plan, go back, and put in at Big Eddy instead. We almost certainly would have paddled Railroad Bridge safely but if something happened, it looks bad in the incident report if you had previously made a plan to avoid the risk and then decided at the last minute to take the risk anyways because it looks fun.  This was an assessment trip of an aspiring new leader so it was easier to lean more to the side of caution. 

Even at these high flows, Big Eddy-Sultan was not very exciting. There was one class II rapid and a couple II- rapids in the first half but the second half had a lot of flatwater and a lot of paddling as the river spread out. This route is in a weird limbo - the crux might be too hard for a flatwater trip but the full stretch is kind of dull for a whitewater trip. 

Right now, the route page for Big Eddy says "Above 4,000 cfs:  Still runnable with caution and prior experience" and I think it's easier than that given our experience at 5700. The route page for the Railroad Bridge put-in says an upper limit of 4,000 but I think groups prepared for class III could push that to 5,000 or a bit more. 

In hindsight, should we have tried the harder stretch? I feel okay with having made the conservative decision. But I do want to come back and do it another time. Today was still better than a day indoors, at least.

And Tom found a whitewater paddle on the side of the river, so that was a cool thing to come up on as a small victory!