We got on Silver Creek on Sunday. The lower road (it's a loop) has been washed out for years. The upper was snowed, so we hiked about 4 miles total. It was a serious undertaking, we took the first abandoned logging road down. It wound up being covered nearly 100% with downed trees for about 2 miles?

The work did pay off though, what an amazing run! The upper half we didn't get on but there's supposedly a 60 footer...

Hard to find with water in it. Snowmobiles would have helped. Don't know if I'd have gone if I knew what was ahead, but I'm glad I did. This is the kind of trip I live for! First decent since the 90s, before the road blew out. Sweet run!

Silver Creek (Cowlitz)

Travis, what time did you guys start driving up/hiking?

We met in Randle at 9am, tried to drive around. Looong drive, wasted about 2 hours when we got stopped by snow. Turned around and came back, the parking for the hike and takeout are only 4 miles apart. The takeout bridge is in town, and the putin is 4 miles up the closest road.

We started hiking at about 11:30, and at 4:30 I don't think we'd seen the river yet! I think we were on about 5:15, and there was more whitewater than we thought. One semi-runnable class 5+ we portaged and one big logjam, otherwise pretty clean! No real pools either, continuous 4+ read and run with some of the most old growth I've seen. There was even one growing out of the actual river! Was beautiful, but work!

I'd like to put in at the very top eventually to see what's up there!

We got to the bridge about 8:30, that is the most beautiful bridge I've seen in a long time.

Edited by Travisimo - 14 May 2013 at 10:22am

Thanks JD, good to know!

I don't see them fixing that road ever though... huuuuge slide.

The upper sounds super interesting now, do you think it'll have water when the snow melts though? How low would you do it and how high have you done it?

Really beautiful river, but boy did we pick the wrong putin!

Any way that 60 footer is runnable?

Edited by Travisimo - 15 May 2013 at 3:48pm