I paddled the river solo. I’m an experienced canoeist with many years of river experience in kayaks, canoes and rafts. Use this information as you see fit. It’s as accurate as I can make it but you are responsible for your own decisions
I started the trip on July 18. There was a lot of rain in the area over the previous two weeks and my sense was that the river was at a relatively high summer level and would drop later in the season. However it was clear from some of the huge and plentiful log jams, that spring high water would be a completely different river.
I paddled the river in three days. I never find a day count very useful as different people have different schedules. On river hours are much more helpful. I paddled for a total of 20 river hours. Day 1, five hours after the shuttle, Day 2, eight hours and Day 3 seven hours. I estimate that it took me 6 river hours to get to Eagle River including the lakes, another 9 river hours to the Rapid River confluence and then 5 hours to the take out. I could easily have stretched the trip out to four days but the time on the river was the most enjoyable bit, camps were buggy so I didn’t linger.Weather was overcast with some rain. Wind about 50 percent of the time. About 60 percent of the wind was downstream, upstream wind would have slowed me down significantly and you should allow for this in trip planning. I finished a day early.
I found the section of river that I paddled to be very straightforward. There were no rapids of any consequence, only a couple of the rapids made class 2. There was lots of wood, logjams and sweepers galore but they were all easily avoided. There were some braided sections but if in any doubt, I simply picked the most obvious route and it always worked out. It’s possible that the river would be more technical at lower levels as rocks start to emerge.
Although the river wasn’t technically challenging, it was lots of fun, plenty of moving water, great scenery. I’d recommend it. Lots of wildlife, including a couple of Moose, Beavers, Bald Eagles and lots of other bird life. No Bears on the river though I saw dozens driving up and also Arctic Fox on the road. For anyone familiar with southern Rockies, this river reminded me of the Kootenay River in Kootenay National Park.
A word on Laurel Archer’s book, Firstly, it was very helpful and accurate, a labour of love. Thank you Laurel. I noted that her write up tends to be very conservative and cautious. This isn’t a criticism, just an observation. Her classification of the rapids is accurate but she tends to provide a detailed description of some rapids that other guidebooks would dismiss with a line or two or ignore. The book was written pre GPS and all of her guide notes refer to map references. I didn’t bother with paper maps, instead I used a Garmin map with the GPS on my cel phone which was very accurate. Laurel mentions many campsites. I couldn’t really figure out where most of them were apart from some really obvious ones but make a general note that there are some sections where there are very few sites and you just need to keep going till one appears. I grabbed one about 2 hours before Rapid River Confluence and was glad I did because the next Morning, I didn’t see another one for a while.