Flatwater Packrafting Course: experience trip - Duwamish Waterway

Note that the following plan has changed from the original posting!

Meet at he?apus Village Park by 9:00. We’ll consolidate cars and drive to the put-in at Codiga Park. There, we'll rig boats on the grass by the parking lot then carry down to the river, a <2 minute walk. There are no rest rooms at either location; we'll pass restrooms along our route at Cecil Moses Park and at Duwamish Waterway Park, our likely lunch stop.

Flatwater packraft course students have priority for this paddle. If you are not a current flatwater course student, please ask permission to register.

The day's tides (high 10.2’ at 8:16, low 6.4’ at 13:44; second high 10.0’ at 18:55) will provide us with an ebb current and with enough water to pass North Wind’s Weir. Expect the river’s current to be slow and to paddle most of the time. Also expect to practice paddling and rescue skills.

Our likely lunch stop, Duwamish Waterway Park, has a sandy boat landing, a quiet grassy area, and a portable toilet. There are other possible stops along the way.

To paddle the Duwamish River is to experience two rivers: the upper river has retained its natural, meandering pattern while the lower river was straightened, dredged, and transformed into early Seattle’s industrial center. These two reaches are separated roughly by North Wind’s Weir, rock that crops out in the riverbed at lower tides, located at the head of tidal influence, an important ecological zone for juvenile salmon. The Weir figured in the Salish people’s oral traditions, told in a series of cedar panels on the river’s left bank in Cecil Moses Park.

We may see wildlife including osprey and salmon; we’ll also see the legacy of Seattle early industrial development—which, infamously, turned the river’s bed sediments into a Superfund site—and experience the modern shipping industry (very big boats and very big cargo cranes!). We’ll paddle around Kellogg Island, through the only part of the Duwamish’s natural channel remaining in the lower river; and we’ll take a break at one of the recently-restored habitat areas along the lower river. For those interested in exploring the river’s natural and human history, the Burke Museum’s Waterlines Map is a good visual trip resource.