Has anyone run the Rattlesnake this year? Interested in the current wood situation and whether the pain to pleasure ratio is worth it. Reports from last summer from AW make the wood sound like a mixed bag, but the run looks beautiful.

we ran it a few years back and portaged 9 times (1 super sketchy). SOOO worth it! Definitely recommend class IV creeking skills and high wood alertness.

Right on, thanks for the word. Sounds like a great run - I'm surprised this isn't on more people's radar. Maybe its in that nebulous zone of not being the "gnar" but having enough issues that it isn't a good beginner/intermediate run.

There were three wood portages - one above the canyon and two after you exit the canyon but before you hit the braided run-out.  Only one seems to "sneak up" on you - it's hidden around a right bend.  But once you see it, there's a nice eddy RL which you can catch for the step-around portage.  There are also a few "dead ends" that can avoided if you're paying attention - the first of which is just a couple of corners below the put-in where the river braids and bends L.  At this corner, take one of the smaller (L or C) channels, as the main R channel to the outside is wooded out.  As JD noted, there's also a log boof in the canyon.  We ran this stretch twice over a three day period, and interestingly, this "boof" changed noticeably between runs.  On our first run, the cleanest option was to boof the log as left as water level allowed.  But two days later there was a good size depression on the upstream side of the log on this left side - my guess is that gravels had eroded out from underneath, allowing flow to go under the log on this side.  This was a surprise, but we just stayed further right without issue.  There's an upstream RR gravel bar (at normal flows) onto which you can step out and scout the log.      

What an incredible place! One of the coolest canyons I've been in. Quite an adventure too: besides the river itself, we nearly stepped on a Rattlesnake while scouting, and made it through a portage while rednecks were shooting guns down into the canyon from above. Actually, I don't know that they were rednecks, they could have been liberals from Seattle, but who knows.

Thank you SO MUCH to the two friendly boaters from Billings, MT who ran our shuttle, saving me a hitch or the bike shuttle from hell. Major river karma points! Hope you guys enjoy the rest of your Washington trip!

For the record, 1700 on the Naches gauge is ELF minimum for Rattlesnake, but we got down with enough water to make the rapids fun. Rattlesnake might be done for the year.

Thanks for the accurate wood beta Jon. I think we portaged river-spanning wood at least 4 times.

The log boof was an interesting place. No problem in a hardshell, but Sarah was in an IK and wasn't too comfortable with the log/undercut wall combo. I ended up running it, got out on the small river left gravel bar, she ferried across the current into the slower moving water above the log and I grabbed her boat and pulled her onto the gravel bar. In hindsight, that was dumb... probably would have been safer for her to just run it.

All in all, such a good trip. I'll be back next year.