Packrafting the Bumping and Naches Rivers 5/1

Katie and Eric

April 30-May 1

We camped out on the edge of the Bumping River Friday night, then stashed our bikes in the woods Saturday morning and drove to the put-in at the Bumping Reservoir. This is in the national forest just east of Mt Rainier, below Chinook Pass.

The Bumping river was fun Class II paddling, but had so many trees fallen over the river that required portaging that we pulled out early and walked back up the road to our car. We finished the afternoon with a fun hike up to Edgar Rock, overlooking the river.

Sunday we decided to raft the Naches river, which is wider and has basically no trees across it. (It looks like they’ve been cut out in many places, and we suspect this is from the rafting guide companies.)

We stashed our bikes just south of Cliffdell at a bridge this time, and drove 8 miles north to put in at another bridge. This time the river only had one section we had to portage around, but was otherwise fun Class II paddling. We made it to the bikes after a few hours on the water, than packed up the rafts in my backpack and biked back to the car.