One Sunday, my brother and I paddled the length of the Duwamish River in Seattle.
The Duwamish is formed from the confluence of the Green River and Black River in Tukwila, a suburb of Seattle. The river flows north into Seattle’s Elliott Bay on Puget Sound. Along the way, it passes through Seattle’s industrial heart.
We launched at Fort Dent Park in Tukwila, on the Green River a short ways above the confluence with the Black River. It would be possible to launch a little further upstream on the Green, but the Black was running so low it would not have been navigable by kayak this late in the summer.
Route map. The Duwamish River has suffered many insults since the arrival of American settlers, including damming, rerouting, and severe industrial pollution.
The Duwamish was a lot more scenic than I had expected, given its association with the busy port of Seattle and heavy industry.
Along the upper reaches, the banks were lined with trees and bushes, and we saw a nutria and a pair of raccoons. The nutria swam across the river in front of us and scurried into a burrow on the bank.
We also saw band-tailed pigeons, a beautiful native pigeon that likes forested areas, as well as spotted sandpipers and killdeer. In the water, we saw numerous jumping salmon, including several absolutely enormous ones. Their presence attracted a harbor seal, not normally a freshwater species, to swim upriver in pursuit.
Launch at Fort Dent Park. The launch we used was a poor beach of riprap beneath a bridge.
Confluence of Green and Black Rivers. The Black River flows in from the right.
Paddling down the Duwamish. Black cottonwood are some of my favorite hardwoods, although most land managers don’t like them because they shed limbs.
I-5 crossing in Allentown. Because of the excessive development along its banks, the best way to appreciate the Duwamish River is by boat.
Osprey calling overhead. The lower Duwamish River is a superfund site because of severe PCB contamination, which may pose a threat to this fish-eating bird.
The Duwamish was tidal well upstream of the confluence, a factor I had not appreciated in my trip planning. Shortly after we launched, the current began to run slowly against us, even though we were headed down the river. The river was flowing backwards! Our fourteen-mile (22-km) paddle ended up taking us about six hours as a result.
The Duwamish River itself officially starts at the confluence of the Green and Black and ends north of Harbor Island, Seattle. It is twelve miles (19 km) long. My brother and I launched a little upstream of the confluence, and we paddled a little past Harbor Island, so our route was slightly longer. If we’d timed it with the ebb tide, we probably could have done the paddle in as little as three hours.
South Park Bridge. In some parts of this neighborhood, the soil was so contaminated by industrial waste they had to rip out people’s yards and repave the residential streets.
Kayaking the lower Duwamish. Seattle is a software town now. This older “tech” is slowly rusting away.
Under a pier on the Duwamish River. A kayak is the perfect boat in which to explore seldom-seen nooks and crannies.
Paddling under an ocean-going barge. Technically, the kayak and the barge are both boats, but they have little else in common—neither in purpose, nor design, nor attitude toward life.
We ended the paddle at Seacrest Park in West Seattle. We saw quite a few other paddlers out on the salt water in Elliott Bay, but we passed only one other kayak on the river. There were a couple of recreational powerboats on the lower stretches of the river, but for the most part, we had the whole thing to ourselves. The trip ended with the magnificent view of downtown Seattle one gets from Seacrest.
Approaching the West Seattle Bridge. The port of Seattle sees less traffic than the port of Vancouver, but a kayaker must still remain alert.
Downtown Seattle waterfront seen from West Seattle. Any time of year, it’s a pretty city.
I think my favorite part of the trip, other than the simple enjoyment of being out on the water in my brother’s company, was the ospreys. Altogether, we saw about a dozen of them, sometimes in groups of up to five, peeping and cheeping at each other. We saw at least three nests, and it looks like these beautiful birds are doing very well on our Duwamish River.
—Alex Sidles