For years, I’d been accessing the magnificent kayaking grounds of the San Juan Islands by driving from Seattle up to Anacortes on Interstate 5. The route took me over several of western Washington’s largest rivers, including the Snohomish, the Stillaguamish, and the beautiful Skagit. The view from the freeway was usually pretty fleeting, but there was always nonetheless the tantalizing view of deep, moving water as I zoomed past.
As they say, you know you’re a kayaker when you can’t drive over a bridge without imagining putting your boat into the water below. And of all the rivers that crossed the I-5 corridor, the Skagit had always been the one that had fired my imagination the most. It was the biggest, fastest, and most remote of the three, and I’d been fantasizing about paddling it for years.
In July, I was up in the North Cascades National Park on a hiking trip, and I happened to stop for supplies in the little town of Marblemount in the nearby foothills. And there, right on the edge of town, just across a little bridge, was the dear old Skagit River. It was much smaller and faster this high in the hills, but it was definitely the same river I’d been thinking about all this time.
On the spot, I conceived the following trip: to launch a kayak on the Skagit in Marblemount, ride it seventy-five miles (120 km) downstream to the delta in Puget Sound, then head another ten miles (16 km) north through the rushing waters of Deception Pass.
Route map. At the time, I did not own the Mountaineers’ excellent guidebook to Washington rivers, so I had to check the route myself on Google Earth.
Never having paddled the Skagit River, I did as much research as I could, checking maps and imagery for dams and rapids and other obstructions and looking for any online trip reports. I discovered that while the upper reaches of the river are popular for whitewater rafting, the stretch from Marblemount to the Sound is seldom paddled. The prospect of solitude enhanced my already keen interest in the river.
(Little did I know, but the Mountaineers have an excellent guidebook to Washington rivers that would have answered all my questions.)
The trip started with the most amazing warbler experience I’d ever had. In just a small stretch of alder and maple near the launch point, there were hundreds of warblers of all different species: yellow, black-throated gray, orange-crowned, MacGillivray’s, and yellow-rumped warblers, plus warbling and red-eyed vireos, including some who were feeding their young! I had never seen so many species in such great numbers so close before.
The long drive and the extraordinary birding delayed my start time, so I only made it about fifteen miles (24 km) down the river the first day.
I had been worried about campsites, because there are hardly any official campgrounds along the Skagit. Camping turned out not to be a problem, because the river is mostly undeveloped. There are hundreds of sandbars and river banks all over the place with no people anywhere near them. I pitched my tent on one such and enjoyed an evening of solitude, with only the rushing water and the fog-shrouded Cascade foothills to keep me company.
Kayaking through the mountains. In its upper reaches, the river was swift enough that I hardly needed to paddle.
Approaching the bridge at Rockport. Rockport would have made a good alternative launch point to Marblemount, one that I used ten years later with my family.
Skagit River campsite in the foothills of the Cascades. Tucked in behind the bushes, my campsite was almost invisible from land.
A big highlight of the next day was the confluence of the Skagit River with the Sauk. The water of the Skagit had until this point been very clear, but the Sauk was milky white with the silt of glaciers. The addition of the Sauk briefly pushed the current speed up to seven miles an hour (11 kph), a fast ride in a folding kayak. The two different-colored waters blended together like cream being poured into coffee, a beautiful phenomenon one doesn’t get to see every day.
The river kept getting bigger and bigger as more streams joined the flow. The only rapids were a handful of bumpy spots here and there, nothing to alarm even a very conservative kayaker like me. Most of the time, the water was completely smooth.
The second day was so warm and clear that, as I made camp just east of the town of Sedro-Woolley, I decided to sleep out under the stars. There were a lot of meteors falling that night, remnants of the recent Perseid shower. One big one left a glowing train in the sky as it fell to earth.
Sauk-Skagit confluence. The milky Sauk is flowing in from the left, discoloring the brown Skagit.
Bumpy section of Skagit River. Even in a giant double sea kayak, the river posed no threat.
Placid section of Skagit River. I drifted down the river, hardly expending any effort, lost in my thoughts.
A bedroll under the sky. In the morning, fishermen on the rocky far shore looked on in envy at my choice access to the river.
In May 2013, the I-5 bridge over the Skagit was damaged by a commercial truck collision, causing a portion of the bridge to drop into the river. They got a new span across pretty quickly, then began working to reinforce it. I paddled past the ongoing construction.
Near the river delta, the Skagit split into a north fork and a south fork. This spot was popular with the fishermen who had come to snag a few of the thousands of running pink salmon. The south fork led to a famous shorebird habitat, and even though I was tempted to go that way to see the shorebird migration, it was the north fork that led to my ultimate destination at Deception Pass.
Interstate-5 bridge reconstruction. From a car, I-5 seems like the most important thing in the universe, but from a kayak, it is only a minor curiosity soon left behind.
Logjam at rail bridge. During the spring freshet, these jams can pose a hazard to boaters.
Cattle wade in the Skagit River. I carried my own fresh water.
Skagit River fork. The left fork outlets some six miles south of the right fork’s outlet.
The Skagit River delta was a maze of sandbars and low islands. In the August sun, it looked like Tahiti.
The delta was also the last place to camp before the saltwater islands in Skagit Bay. To take advantage of the lovely surroundings, I set a tarp-tent on a sandbar in the swamps of the delta.
I was aware that the river delta would be tidally influenced, so I made a careful survey of the sandbar to ensure that I wouldn’t be swamped in the middle of the night. Finding no tide lines, I concluded that the tides must not be strong enough to raise the water level here.
This proved to be a mistaken calculation, as the water began creeping higher and higher toward sunset. Concerned by the water’s ever-closer approach to my tarp-tent, I found another spot on the sandbar closer to the mainlaind…only to see that spot also swamped an hour later.
As darkness fell, my patch of the sandbar was reduced to a tiny island, and I realized with mounting horror why I had not earlier found any tidelines: the entire sandbar would submerge at high tide.
With only a headlamp for illumination, I threw everything into my boat, thankful for my folding kayak’s cavernous storage capacity. The entire swamp was flooded, and I knew that even after the water went back down, all the land would be soaked and muddy—too wet to camp on.
It was looking like ol’ Alex was going to have to sleep in his kayak tonight, but then my headlight beam chanced across a teeny little patch of sand that was not yet submerged. Paddling gingerly so as not to upset my poorly-loaded boat, I inched my way over to the sand patch and began marking the waterline with sticks. Gradually the water went up, up, and up…and then stopped. At eleven o’clock at night, it finally began to go back down.
Thanking my lucky stars (and the weak tides of the quarter moon), I made camp on the little patch of sand that had stayed dry, a patch so small that there wasn’t even room for a tent—just a sleeping pad and a pillow, with water four inches to either side of me.
First sight of sea stacks in Skagit River delta. The sight of these saltwater landforms always fills me with joy, because it means I’m getting close to my beloved Puget Sound.
Tarp-tent in Skagit River delta. This beautiful campsite did not survive the rising midnight tide.
I slept in the next day to catch the afternoon ebb that would carry me north through Puget Sound. The familiar sea stacks of the sound announced my transition from freshwater to salt at the river’s mouth.
Finally out the sound, I briefly investigated Hope Island as a possible campsite. I had thought the island was day use only, but I found several authorized campsites. Unfortunately, I also found a plague of mosquitos, a strange breed of giant brown mosquito that, while not extremely aggressive, produced massive itchy bites. Two welts were enough to persuade me to move on another few miles to Skagit Island, where I knew there would be no bugs to harass me in my tarp-tent. Skagit Island was just on the east side of Deception Pass, making a perfect launch point for a run through the tidal rapids the next day.
Breaking out into Skagit Bay. This is one of the most sheltered parts of Puget Sound.
Camped on Skagit Island. Yet again, I set up only a rainfly, not the tent, the better to enjoy views and fresh air.
The fifth and final day dawned very foggy, a clinging sea fog that is more usual to the outer coast than the sheltered waters of the sound. Some people don’t like the fog and the mist and the rain, but I do. They remind me of home.
The fog did make me cautious enough that I decided to go through Canoe Pass instead of the main channel of Deception Pass. There were power boaters around, and I didn’t want to take chances. I shot through on a moderate ebb flow and ended the trip on the beach at Bowman Bay.
Foggy morning on Skagit Bay. This area is well known for the marine fog it experiences during summer, especially in the mornings.
Headed for Deception Pass. A compass or GPS comes in handy even in these sheltered waters.
Entering Deception Pass. Main channel to the left, Canoe Pass to the right.
The trip was a huge success. There were plenty of campsites and plenty of wildlife. I saw mule deer, elk, a river otter, harbor seals, cottontail rabbits, and a Steller sea lion, and heard a pack of coyotes in the swamp at night, and saw more salmon than you can shake a stick at.
Water supply proved to be more of a difficulty than I had expected, because the river was too silty after the confluence with the Sauk. I am a chlorinator, not a pumper, so silt in water is bad news for me—to say nothing of my concerns about agricultural runoff and industrial pollution, which are not mitigated by chlorine. Luckily, there was a municipal park in Mt. Vernon where I was able to refill a jug from a bathroom sink.
I had been worried that the Skagit would be too developed to be much fun, but even near towns, the river retained a fresh and wild character. Even as a veteran kayak-camper, I was not disappointed with the “outdoorsiness” of the experience. And, as a sea kayaker, the steady boost from the current at four or five miles per hour was a special treat!
—Alex Sidles