09/02/2026
Teaching the kids about the Hoh River!
The Hoh River in Olympic National Park is a pretty incredible example of why watershed size doesn’t always tell the whole story.
The Hoh River watershed is only about 299 square miles, but thanks to the Olympic Peninsula’s incredibly wet climate, this river can move a LOT of water. Its recorded peak flow has reached around 60,000 cubic feet per second (cfs). 🤯
For comparison, the Arkansas River at Cañon City drains roughly 3,060 square miles—more than 10 times the area—yet its recorded peak flow is about 9,480 cfs.
Small watershed. BIG water. 🌧️🌊
And maybe one of the coolest lessons? The Hoh is allowed to be messy.
It meanders across a broad floodplain, cuts new channels, deposits gravel bars, erodes banks, and carries huge fallen trees downstream. Those trees form natural logjams that slow water, create pools, and provide complex habitat for salmon. 🪵 🐟
It’s nature doing, on a huge scale, many of the same things we try to recreate through river restoration with structures like PALS and BDAs—slowing water, increasing complexity, reconnecting floodplains, and creating habitat.
Often a healthy river isn’t neat, straight, or predictable.
Sometimes healthy rivers are messy. 💙
