Lower Eagle River

Couple of us will be packrafting Eagle River Wednesday starting ~6:30. Should be a suburban to pick us up if anyone needs a ride back to the camprounds. Glad to have the company!!
Mike

10 of us couldn’t wait for full blown summer, and ran bridge to bridge yesterday (4/28/11). It was low, and not ideal, but damn it was good to be on the water again. It was all iced over at the putin, but if you just walk under the bridge and put-in there, it’s fine. We did have to portage twice due to ice all the way across, but both were obvious, and easily seen from the river. There was only really 1 spot where the water ‘rushed’ under an ice sheet, and as long as you were paying attention, you had plenty of time to get over and miss it. It was low, but never to the point where we had to get out of our boats and drag them.

The only donwer is that campground is still iced over, not even a chute through the snow/ice yet. Soon enough!

Just rode my bike to the cg to scout. CG rapids is now open, and both chutes are probably (barely) runnable, but looks like a lot of rock avoidance and general scraping and scooting. The approach looked even worse for rock scraping. Maybe more fun by weekend or next week?

Just ran Eagle River bridge to bridge last night (Sept. 15th, 2011). Right at campground rapids I lost my kayak paddle. It’s a black 194cm carbon fiber AquaBound paddle (one-piece, straight shaft). If you see it, please call me (Libby) at 509-339-5596 or Ryan at 907-229-0847. Thank you!!

Anyone done Bridge-to-Bridge recently (past week or so)? I’m more wondering what the run is like during low water, as I’ve never done it before.

Anyone know if Eagle (or any other rivers) are open yet?

She’s open for business folks. No ice bridges, and really not even and channels between sheets. We rafted the bridge to bridge section. Campground is open. There is some threat of washing under ice in the middle where the wood usually is. The path on river right is wide open. It looks about class III- right now, but it actually feels calmer than that. Let the season begin.

There is one freshly downed tree in the right chute at Campground Rapids. Its not very big, but it is strategically located. A two-man crew approaching from the “other” side with safety rope and a handsaw could make short work of it. I had no problems getting to the left chute with today’s low water, that might become more difficult at higher levels.

Campground rapids is now do-able, water seemed to raise up a few inches overnight. Expect a bit of butt-scooting and rock ping pong, but not a terrible amount. The right chute is the only one that allows for uninterrupted paddling. Just did multiple runs only of CG, looked like anything above would be an exercise in patience and practice of exit/entry in low rocky water. FYI gate is still currently closed.