Sinuous vertical walls reflected the Elwha’s emerald green water. Dramatic and beautiful, yes, but unsettling. Weren’t we supposed to be done with the gorges?

My research—intentionally incomplete (isn’t the mystery part of the fun?)—indicated two gorges above Elkhorn camp, but here was a third. Between us, we had zero helmets, and one shorter than optimal “rescue” rope. I scanned the slimy walls for escape gullies.

The gorge passed with only class III rapids, and I bellowed a yowl of relief. Despite my planning for a non-whitewater trip, the Elwha remains a whitewater river, dropping 4,800′ to the ocean from its source at Dodwell-Rixon Pass.

We began our descent here, after slogging upstream for 4 days on the Elwha River trail. Reaching the top of the Elwha also meant kissing the source of the Queets, and completing a circle for me. We’d followed the Queets to salt water years earlier, but I’d never been to its source basin. Now, I was completing one journey with the start of another.

The snow finger which gives birth to the Elwha is shrinking but it still delivers pure mountain water. I didn’t carry a filter or a bottle, just a cup. It was nine miles of walking back downstream before the little Elwha was deep enough to float our packrafts, sliding us along in glorious ease, presenting a world very different from the depths of forest.

Bret Simmons was an under-sized linebacker on our high school football team who made all-division through smarts and grit. The grit is still there. When we came to a 10-foot falls he immediately proclaimed, “I’m running that!” The hole wasn’t too nasty unless you plugged it dead-center. The pool was deep and calm. So I grabbed the 6-mil rope I’d poached from our rigging and crouched nearby on a ledge, “Just make sure you go off the right side.” He did, and swam. His old-school packraft with a heavy pack on the bow didn’t help. Nonetheless, when I arrived minutes later he beamed in a ray of warm sun, ready to go.

Bret saw fish below here, big fish. Bull-trout (actually a char) or Steelhead probably, he said, both ocean-going anadromous fish who have their homeland back after the deconstruction of the Elwha’s two dams over a dozen years ago.

The upper dam, at Glines Canyon, bridged a vertical whitewater gorge. We’d managed to avoid any class V water thus far by backpacking around Grand and Rica Canyons. But now we were back in our boats, and a scout was in order. We were done with backpacking.

An elk trail led to a remnant of dam concrete, where tinny speakers eerily shared interpretive facts to a vacant overlook. At least I could see most of the crux rapid from there. It didn’t look easy. The river-level portage option was a definite maybe. We were not done with backpacking.

A final river night, a last day of constructed logjams and dismantled dams; now we were nearing the Straits. When algae disappeared from the rocks and a headwind blew, I knew we were close to the sea. The sandbar at the river mouth is growing again after dam removal, with a perfect channel leading between breakers. We paddled into the swell, feeling insignificant as our companion—the beautiful Elwha—vanished back into its beginning.