Gauge Description:

This is a rain-fed run and it generally takes at least a day of good hard winter rain to bring the water up. Department of Ecology recently established a realtime gauge for this creek. You can also check the rainfall at the Arlington NWS station. The river rises and falls very quickly and once it stops raining the flows drop immediately. Of nearby realtime gauges, the North Fork Stilliguamish generally gives you the best idea of area flows (look for a winter rain event that brings flows up to around 8000-11000 cfs on this gauge). At the river, the USGS Pilchuck nr Bryant gauge is just upstream from the Highway 9 bridge. It's no longer an active gauge and getting to a spot where you can actually read the numbers would require you to go across private property (although you can read it when paddling past). You can see this staff gauge from the river left side of the bridge. Although you won't be able to read the numbers, the top of the board is at 5.7' (approx 2800 cfs) so from that you can estimate what the level is. Most paddlers use the large rock in the middle of the river on the upstream side of the bridge to estimate relative flow. If water is only just reaching the rock but not really flowing up on it then you probably want to skip this upper section and just paddle the middle section. If water is flowing up over the rock then this is the level where the upper section becomes boatable (around 4.5, approx. 1390 cfs) (see gauge photo). Once the rock is fully covered the river is running at high water--use caution. The staff gauge roughly corresponds (channel has likely changed since the last set of measurements) to cfs as follows:

3.5' - 560 cfs
4.0' - 930 cfs
4.5' - 1390 cfs
5.0' - 1950 cfs
5.5' - 2600 cfs
6.0' - 3300 cfs