Wishkah River

August 25, 2023: Long Swamp Boat Launch

I’ve paddled at least a section of all the rivers that flow into the Grays Bay except the Wishkah. Today I have a plan to finally paddle that one too. Though there are several possible launch sites onto it, I’ve been shy about this river.

I recently found last week on google maps where Jeff Wong wrote a brief five star review three years ago. He indicated that it was possible to paddle upstream from the Long Swamp Boat Ramp. That is seven miles upstream from the Wishkah River’s mouth and where I thought the current would be too strong. As he put it: “go in either direction as the tide dictates.” That was new to me. Many people float their boats down these local rivers not expecting to return back to the launch except by road.

Below are the nearby launch sites from the popular site ‘Go Paddle‘. These dots are awaiting descriptions from volunteers beyond the approximate coordinates and an outdated name. The one I have decided to use today is Long Swamp Boat Launch. Either of the two dots east or west along the Chehalis River would add almost three miles of industrial shoreline before even reaching the Wishkah River’s mouth. I’ve paddled east from Cosmopolis before where there is an attractive flood plain preserve to explore. The Aberdeen Ramp is only 1,500 feet across the Chehalis River but it’s a river that has been wide and choppy for me in the past. Either I added a six mile round trip before reaching the Wishkah or risked crossing the Chehalis.

I tried to get an early start so I could paddle both directions.

Here’s a look again at the Aberdeen Ramp across from the mouth of the Wishkah.

Many locals have also used this unlisted site behind Aberdeen’s Walmart. Last month I checked out another local tip that suggested launching behind a public school but found it was fenced and locked.

I passed through town where there must be over a hundred hanging baskets of petunias between Aberdeen and Hoquiam. I stopped when I spotted the watering truck. The worker said that they are watered daily and get fertilized once a week. An excellent 2015 newspaper article about the history, the people and the investment in the ‘Bloom Team’ can be found here. I once built a watering trailer for Ilwaco’s planters and am envious of Aberdeen’s set up and commitment.

I left town northbound on Wishkah Road catching occasional glimpses of the river. Since Google last did their street view, Aberdeen has built about a mile of high steel wall between the road and the Wishkah River for flood control.

When I arrived at the ramp I was pleased to see another vehicle nicer than mine and a clean parking lot.

The original plan was to paddle downstream, enjoy the river, Aberdeen and the bridges. Maybe four to six hours. Then the tide would be rising and I could paddle upstream without bottoming out on shallows. The original plan also had me arriving earlier than 12:30.

The river had its opinion. It was flowing towards the sea though the tide was near slack.

Off I went upstream.

Soon I found the owners of the truck and trailer. Pausing, they waved me to port while they brought in their fish. Now to look up what a ‘blue back’ is.

The next adventure was of the ‘I hope no one was hurt’ variety.

I saw a puffy legging or sleeve only partway out of the water. Looking closer I discovered fortunately that the owner was nowhere to be found. I gave it a tug but it wanted to stay. Here is a fish eye’s view.

This wasn’t urban Aberdeen anymore. It was very quiet. The houses in the lower center of this this picture are about a mile apart.

The trees overhung the river and the banks were steep.

Looking up I saw a house built atop a steep bank at the Aberdeen Gardens Road bridge. For a more vertical view they also have a ladder propped against a tree.

Did I say how high the water line is on the bank? It’s a 4.5′ tide now and a 9.4′ tide is coming in later in about six hours.

4.5′ was not high enough to clear the log jam ahead. If it was higher, it would be important to return before the logs were exposed again.

Wishkah Road was just up the steep bank from the log jam.

It would not an easy place to slide down a boat and even harder to drag it on a portage.

Heading back downstream I came across an emergency. Not for me but for this honey bee which was radiating circles in the water trying to get anywhere else.

I backed up and scooped it out with the paddle.

Off we went for the shore while I fuddled with trying to take a movie. Its left wing was damaged so it might end up being a walking bee.

I might be having a day off but this was a very important day for this bee. Fifteen minutes later it crawled behind one of these sticks and away from the river. I had taken apart the paddle casually putting half of it on the rear deck. Apparently and fortunately it floats.

Here’s seventy seconds of edited video.

This is a pretty clean river but this fishing float didn’t belong. I felt it should come home to our garden. Turns out that motorcycle helmets float.

Maybe the heat or lack of rain is stressing the trees. Maybe autumn is coming in August. The leaves are already falling onto the river.

Not far from the launch my seat strap broke. Not to complain, but with the seat’s back half floppy it wasn’t comfortable anymore. When I reached the landing I decided to drive instead of paddling downstream. So far I had found almost 3.5 miles good paddling upstream.

I had never seen the Kurt Cobain Under the Bridge Memorial Park. I imagined it to be a grassy half acre with a steep bank to the lower Wishkah. The grunge group Nirvana helped make the Wishkah River famous with their 1996 live album From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah. Also there is a song from their Nevermind album about living under a leaky tarp under a bridge. Wikipedia says that this may be a myth mostly created by Kurt himself but this park is an important place in Grunge music drawing visitors from around the world.

The park is a mile upstream from the Wishkah River’s mouth on Second and Stanton and was dedicated in 2015. The reviews in Tripadvisor make interesting reading with some remarking how quiet and contemplative it is. Watch for a deep hole hidden next to the utility box shown in the first picture below where a post was removed so you don’t trip and fall onto the street like I did. This wooden sign was apparently put up by locals weary of the parade of tourists. It may disappear with better times in the future so I copied it down. It reads: THIS IS NOT A GIFT SHOP / NO, KURT DIDN’T LIVE HERE / HE LIVED AT 1210 E 1st / NO, WE DIDN’T KNOW HIM / PHIL NEXT DOOR DID / YES, WE HAVE LOTS OF TRAFFIC, YES, WE GET TIRED OF IT / WATCH OUT-NEEDLES / IF YOU THINK THERE’S TROUBLE-YOU CALL 911 / PLEASE DON’T STEAL OUR STUFF.

The closest house has a nicely decorated large porch behind a fence. Apparently hearing a clomp clomp outside the door isn’t always package delivery.

Here is the park and the bridge.

Half a mile away my partner found this listing for this large riverfront house, on the Wishkah, on a dead end road and not requiring flood insurance for $299,900 that was worth dreaming about.

I am fortunate that I was able to paddle the upper Wishkah River and experience the quiet beautiful area it passes through. I will have to rewrite its page in my launch site book. Not much information was to be found online for an out-of-towner and I thought this might be one of Grays Harbor’s most challenging rivers to access. There is still the lower river to explore and the upper river is always worth a return trip.

On the way home the forest fires created a red sunset over Willapa Bay .

6.9 miles traveled in 2 hours and 43 minutes with a maximum speed of 4.9 mph averaging 2.5 moving mph.

Humptulips River

August 7, 2023

Oops, I Missed

Today would be a good day to explore any of the rivers that flow into Grays Harbor. The summer sun was still setting late, and the tide would be rising all afternoon. I first checked out a possible future launch site onto Aberdeen’s Wishkah River near a public school. It was fenced and locked, so I drove another half hour to the Humptulips River. Other than a couple of creeks and two more branches of the Hoquiam River, these are the last two Gray Harbor rivers covered in my launch sites book into which I have yet to dip a paddle.

The town of Humptulips is twenty two miles upstream from the North Bay of Grays Harbor. The town’s boat ramp “…is suitable for small to medium-sized watercraft, including drift boats, kayaks, and canoes” according to snoflo.org. The Thorberg Boat Launch is only seven miles from North Bay. Today I would launch just two miles from the bay at the Morley Boat Launch and paddle the five miles up to Thorberg and back.

A rising tide from 1.6′ ensured that the launch would not be a muddier field when I returned and would help push my boat up the river. According to Wikipedia, the name ‘Humptulips’ comes from the local Chehalis language. It means ‘hard to pole’ referring to the tribe’s difficulty poling their canoes on the river. Today might be legendarily difficult but I could always retreat back downriver. Better than retreating up a river against a current.

I quickly paddled the 700 feet upstream to the SR 109 bridge. Notice that we only see half the bridge? Apparently that’s significant.

Ahead the waterway was loggy and blocked. A WDFW ramp was built here that I figured must access both downstream and upstream. I could go no further upstream with a tide this low.

I went back to the ramp to find my missing map to look downstream. It wasn’t in my gear bucket, it wasn’t in the car either. It was in the bag behind my kayak’s seat. Only two storage areas on the boat, but five weeks without a paddle and my packing routine was already forgotten.

Off I went to what I figured to be a four mile round trip to look at the expansive Grays Harbor’s North Bay. Then I could turn around, load up, and maybe launch somewhere else today. There were minnows at the ramp. Ahead of me a fish jumped multiple times as a water bug apparently kept one jump ahead of it. This is a popular fishing river.

Soon I saw an open horizon ahead.

Grays Harbor / North Bay is big.

The map below marks an almost 13 mile view across the open water to Laidlow.

Almost wished I had risked bringing the ‘good’ camera with its eyepiece and better lens. I have gotten better at double checking that a camera is safely buttoned up after dunking a few. The compact Sony I brought today has a 30x lens which was only lightly splashed with salt water. I panned the bay for a minute.

A nearby beached tree evolving, soon swim out to sea.

Probably the longest shots of a heron or a pelican I’ll ever post.

Here’s a view of Ocean Shores five miles to the west and Ned’s Rock almost five miles southeast behind what I’ll call ‘Bobby Pin Log’.

I found a free treepod. It helped hold the camera steady. A freighter was leaving the bay.

What really kept me here were the quiet pelicans that were flying west into the wind.

I watched for an hour and a half appreciating where I was. Here’s a short video (under a minute) of flying pelicans. I omitted the sound because of wind noise. The flock had passed over silently.

The Garmin with the marine charts was invaluable in returning to the deep channel. The water was only a few inches deep where I had been blown to.

Time to go back up the river. Here are 40 seconds of wind and plovers as I am pushed along the shore.

With the tide rising and the west wind becoming stronger, I decided to paddle into a couple of sloughs I had passed. The first one wasn’t special and soon ended at a log jam. The second slough was a gem. It will call for a book rewrite of the possibilities of the Morley launch.

My computer’s photo app calls this second slough Jessie Slough.

It went under Burrows Road bridge.

The Garmin soon informed me that I was paddling across land; it thought the river had ended, and not for the first time. As on other trips, I paddled on despite what it said for a good hour in the calm woods and deep water.

After a while I heard the sound of traffic. A road sighting would give me a clue of where I had been when I checked the maps back home. In this lagoon I saw a bridge just behind more logs.

The brisk rising tide (2.3’/hr.) pushed me to the end.

Here is a last look at the bay from the entrance of Jessie Slough before rounding the point on the left. It was time to head back to the launch as I had a long drive home before dark. I skipped the next slough. I discovered later it would have taken me under SR 109.

The shoreline had changed back at the Morley Boat Launch. The tide had risen 6.8 feet since leaving.

I continued to the bridge again. It wasn’t as loggy anymore.

The incoming current held me against a log and persuaded me that I should stay near the shore in the eddies as the river narrowed down. Ahead the water seemed to swirl over the logjam underwater.

I posted the following map to a Facebook kayaking group when I got home. They were very helpful and confirmed that I should have taken the west channel. It is not blocked by logs and is used by boaters coming downriver. After passing the island they turn and row the short distance back upstream to the launch.

Oops, I had missed the bypass. A higher tide would have helped a lot, too. As the map reveals, I had earlier seen only part of a cantilever bridge which spans the island with no columns.

As I left, a young couple were studying the river. They greeted me after I landed and were amazed how green everything was. They had seen the minnows at the ramp. At their home in Arizona it was 102 degrees, an hour away from Death Valley. I must have let it slip that I garden for a living. They felt it was almost criminal the amount of water being used around their home for golf courses and said that gardening must change.

The phone’s free Map My Tracks app and the Garmin don’t always agree. I like that the phone might be overestimating my top speed like an Italian speedometer, but the Garmin’s numbers are going into the journal.

8.6 miles traveled in 3 hours and 18 minutes with a maximum speed of 5.7 mph (not 6.8) averaging 2.6 moving mph.