The Channel That Only Exists Because Someone Pays For It

The Skagit River delivers about 2.8 million tons of sediment into Skagit Bay every year, the largest load of any Puget Sound tributary. Eleven miles of navigation channel run straight through that delivery, and the channel is actively trying to close. What you can float through the Swinomish this season isn't a fact about the landscape — it's the output of a funding cycle, a contractor's schedule, and a century-old set of rock structures that are quietly failing.

Go look at: the most recent condition survey rather than the chart, and do the tide arithmetic out loud before you transit.