Kayaking from Monroe to Hoover

Trip Overview

We had a mostly leisurely paddle from the Monroe boat ramp down to the Hoover Water Access. At the boat ramp, the water was slow enough for most of the group was able to paddle around some while I shuttled cars to the take-out point. They couldn't go far upstream because the current got too strong, but could go a little bit downstream and still make it back. We started down the river at about 10:50 am and got to Hoover by 3:00 pm or so with a lunch break. In one place there were riffles that where a bit shallow so everyone was scraping bottom a little. I didn't see an obvious deeper channel we could have used. There were a few logs that needed to be avoided. Where the Skykomish joins the Snoqualmie to form the Snohomish river, we took the left channel and there was a log-jam with space to go around, but it looked like the main current was running into/under the logs. Two people in our party went through with no problem but were paddling hard to keep away from the logs. Some others didn't want to try it so we carried our kayaks around.

Along the Snohomish river we kept to the main channel. On a previous trip report I described our experience with the left side channel, but with the lower water level this time it didn't look good. On the main channel there were a few logs to avoid and a few interesting currents, but nothing difficult. We saw Bald Eagles, a Blue Heron, and lots of smaller birds.

When we went, the gauge "Snohomish River Near Monroe, WA - 12150800" https://waterdata.usgs.gov/mon... was at 2640 ft3/s. The gauge at "Skykomish River near Gold Bar - 12134500"https://waterdata.usgs.gov/mon... was at 1050 ft3/s.