AdamG and I spent the weekend over on the far coast of the OP exploring the East Fork of the Quinault. There isn't much info online and I know from other threads that some people were talking about going over there for New Years if water remains low. I want to provide some beta but not spoil the fun for anyone who wants to get in there and have a real adventure. The East Fork of the Quinault is definitely an adventure.

AdamG and I arrived Saturday afternoon and spent the remaining daylight hours hiking up to Pony Bridge and bushwack scouting from river left (attempting I should say) the first falls (Dolly Falls) that Korb describes as the crux of the run. We never got a good look at it during our scout but his description is spot on about it being the crux of the run. We got a few decent looks at other parts of the river and they looked relatively wood free so we decided the next day we would hike up with boats and give er. Putting in at Pony Bridge we made a couple blind turns into the gorge and arrived at a mid stream boulder with a slot on the left and a small eddy/wood pile on the right. The left is a nasty pocket with old growth; probably runnable but we passed on that and made the portage on right. Again, Korb is spot on with his assessment here that the wood situation can greatly decrease or greatly increase the difficulty of portaging this drop on the right side.  If you commit yourself to this point there is only one way out. I won't spoil the fun by giving away all the details of the portage but you will want decent climbing skills, two ropes, 2 carabineers, two pieces of 3ft webbing, and a dry suit. Dolly Falls is a three tier drop with the first being the left side pocket/right side portage and the second drop being a totally unrunnable log/sieve pile at the flows we saw. We estimated about ~250 cfs as our flow for this trip. Continue portaging right and put back in to run the third and final drop of Dolly Falls.

After the Dolly Falls portage you encounter numerous class IV/V ledge drops and quality boulder choked rapids.  We were able to boat scout some of the rapids but more often than not it was best for at least one person to get out and take a look. Often the rapids would have boulder strewn entrances with the main flow narrowing down to boat wide exit slots. Scout these rapids that end in slots! Some had wood and others are very undercut or caved out on both sides. About halfway (maybe?) there is a very high quality bedrock class V rapid. After this rapid there are more boulder rapids and more 5 to 6 ft ledges much like the southeastern classic Big Creek (sorry I haven’t a Northwestern version to refer to yet). We were surprised that the rapids continued to the very end where the walls receded and we could see the opposite bank of the river where Graves Creek enters the EF Quinault. Overall I would say the EF Quinault is well worth the effort. The hike in was easy; I think we knocked it out in about an hour. Total time from the start of the hike back to the truck at Graves Creek campground was about 5 hours. Wood situation was manageable as of 12/19/11. We both thought we would not want to be in there in a large group. Three is probably the best group size IMO.

I know AdamG took lots of photos so maybe he will post those up somewhere later.

 

I'll survive! Glad to hear someone got in there and got it done. There are more than enough exploratory runs to go around out here.

No, Ben really wanted to get in there the other weekend and I was too lazy to make the drive. Thats great you guys got in there.

It's definitely a beast of a drive to get over there. No snow/No flow anywhere else is a good motivator though!

Yo Hulkster n AdamG--

I got halfway through your TR before wondering if Y'nz were the duo we Robed with, and then showed up for Fool's Canyon.
Way to go get 'er done!
Ain't no toes to worry bout steppin on round here- rather we're all just standing on the shoulders of giants anyway (or, boofing off of them!)

Hey can you do PP a huge favor though? You should file your TR as a Trip Report in PP's database. That way its more searchable from the rivers page.

Here's all you need to do:

1) go to the rivers page w/ the gauge listings. Scroll down and click on the Quinault run "Pony Bridge to Graves Creek" (right?)

2) it should pull up a description page for that run that, well look at that! Hasn't been fuilled out yet by a user!!
But first you should do this: mouse down to the lower right corner to the grey box that says "create a trip report". A page opens. Fill out the fields and cut n paste the text from your post (your TR). BAM! Now your TR is enshrined in PP's database. Cuz this thread is gonna dissapear in a few months after other threads bury it, right?

3) go back to the Quinalt page. If you're still logged in, click "Edit River" or whatever the button says at the top left of the river description page. Now you can contribute to PP's wiki- style online guidebook.

Here are some guidelines for guidebook descriptions:

- try not to describe sh*t in 1st person. Realize that after 20 more crews go in, 8 of the paddlers from those 20 crews may need/want to refine the description. So for this reason 1st person accounts ("I", "we" ect.) Should be avoided.

-try to appeal to the average boater. So if you are Uber Gnar, don't sandbag the hell out of it 'cuz some milquetoast portage lover needs to interpret your description. If you are ultra conservative don't act like every little 1" curler wave is gonna be super sketchy...
You get the idea.

- just try to be accurate. Most importantly where the access fields are concerned: put-in and take out details to help people stream line their logistics.

-Trip Reports are where you want to focus on your particular 1st person account. Specific things that happened, ect. The guidebook description should be approached like you wuz writin' any guidebook.

Other than that, both ate blank canvases. But if you look at the Duckabush description, you can see where a second boater came along and added his 1st person account to someone else's 1st person account. The result is that now it is an incoherent jumble of two seperate trips in two different types of craft, at two different water levels. That page needs help.

well, slick, I guess you gotta print up your own! Don't expect me to wear one- though I've resembled that description... I don't necessarily want to encourage that aspect of myself. Still, I'd rather portage than get jacked up.

Btw- nice to paddle something easy that we didn't have to worry about that stuff- I had A good time the other week. Lookin forward to the next one!