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Sea Kayak Trips Bulletin Board
Welsh Island
Posted By: Don Beale
Date: Sunday, 10 October 1999, at 2:17 p.m.
I met Mike Hanks at Cathlamet, WA to see part of the wildlife refuge there. After deciding to put in at Skamokawa, and getting on the water about 11:00, we went up Skamokawa Creek until we ran out of water. Not much exiting there, a warm-up run. One of the things I like to do is look at the bottom for river rocks that are interesting; I have a "collection(of sorts) of river agate. Nothing there, just sandstone.
After stopping at the ramp and shedding a layer we decide to go across the channel to Welsh Island. Welsh is one of two islands at the upper end of the Lewis and Clark Wildlife Refuge. It streches from Tounge Point by Astoria up to Cathlamet, some 30 miles or so I think. The weather was for 10 MPH west winds, nothing we couldnt handle. As it turned out it was less that that. A relief, I have been sailing there with 4' chop, and the wind picks up quickly in the afternoons. It turned out to be a very nice day.
We chose (or did I choose?) to go downstream and look for the channel between Welsh and Tenasillahe islands. As it turned out, we should have gone upstream. We went around the lower point, and began exploring the many little sloughs that make up the wildlife refuge. I was impressed by the quality of the plant life, lots of hyacinth in the water, which requires fairly clean water I understand. I had thought the river dirtier than that.
Slough after slough, we ended up in the bushes. Mike has paddled mostly open water, and is much more concerned about scratching his boat than I. We saw a few cormorants, and lots of ducks. Quite a few duck hunters, too. Thier decoys has me fooled, until I got closer than was reasonable for a live duck, and saw the guy with the gun. I felt a little guilty after scaring some up and hearing boom, boom, but perhaps we contributed to his dinner. Ostensibly there is an endangered species of white tailed deer there, but they must really be endangered as we didnt see any sign of them. After stopping in a field of wild mint (and little spiders) for lunch, we continued the search for the "inside passage". We remain convinced that it was the very next slough we hadnt explored, by process of elimination according to the chart. Finally deciding it would be shorter to retrace our route out, we went further upstream on the channel side, and discovered the initial error. After stopping to stretch and crossing back to the Washington side, we went looking for the Skamokawa waterfront. I recall pictures of the houses with all thier decks over the river forming a boardwalk. That must be a historical picture, because all we saw were remains, a few houses, several derelict boats, and a net drying shed.
Lessons learned:
Know where you are. Had we stopped and figured this out once across the channel, the inside passage would have been much less elusive.
Go with the flow. We were bucking the current a lot of the time, and could have covered more ground with less effort had we gone the other way.
Build another paddle. I've lost track of how many, but the evolution continues...
Paddle more often. I am lucky to get out six or seven times a year. Using Mike as an excuse worked well. Thanks Mike!
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