Conditions:Incognito Canyon-20250620070003
Latest: |
19 Jun 2025 (2 mos ago) |
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| Reported by: | Coops (132 reports), AdamOtter (67 reports) | |
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| Quality: | Great |
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| Waterflow: | High |
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| Wetsuit: | Full wetsuit |
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| Water temperature: | ||
| Difficulty: | Advanced |
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| Time: |
Team: 7 people with experience level Intermediate to Advanced
Trip report URL:
Comments: Early season high flow incognito run, conditions were v5a4. Top-down shuttle approach worked well, the road is no problem for a medium-clearance vehicle, just a little overgrown in places.
Great time but water was cold despite bright sunny day. A hood and/or shell is highly recommend for staying warm and avoiding brain freeze. The canyon was quite slippery and people slid on their butts for a lot of the raps.
Despite no reports of anyone running it for 2 years, the anchors are all in great condition. We added a high-flow traverse line bolt to access R5.
The crux was the bottom of R2. The rap line (and slippery rock) means you end up straight into the full force of the constricted flow. At high flows a redirect cloud be rigged from a tree to keep you even further DCR.
The exit is now dry - no swimming needed! We did mineral directly after incognito for the best June day ever.
All condition reports
| Date | Quality | Waterflow | Wetsuit | Difficulty | Time | Team | Reported by |
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| Good | Moderate Low 
| Thin wetsuit
| Normal |  7 hours
| 2 people Advanced to Intermediate | JGM (22 reports) | |
Comment: Canyon section was quite enjoyable, but the pay to play is not there. You definitely have to earn this canyon
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| Great | High
| Full wetsuit
| Advanced | | 7 people Intermediate to Advanced | Coops (132 reports),AdamOtter (67 reports) | |
Comment: Early season high flow incognito run, conditions were v5a4. Top-down shuttle approach worked well, the road is no problem for a medium-clearance vehicle, just a little overgrown in places.
Great time but water was cold despite bright sunny day. A hood and/or shell is highly recommend for staying warm and avoiding brain freeze. The canyon was quite slippery and people slid on their butts for a lot of the raps. Despite no reports of anyone running it for 2 years, the anchors are all in great condition. We added a high-flow traverse line bolt to access R5. The crux was the bottom of R2. The rap line (and slippery rock) means you end up straight into the full force of the constricted flow. At high flows a redirect cloud be rigged from a tree to keep you even further DCR. The exit is now dry - no swimming needed! We did mineral directly after incognito for the best June day ever. | |||||||
| Great | Moderate
| Thick wetsuit
| Normal |  9 hours
| 10 people Brand new to Advanced | Beccap (47 reports) | |
Comment: A beautiful sunny day, beautiful views of Kachess Lake, and fun, sporty flow. Added webbing to R2 (the existing webbing had just a small nick in it, so we decided to leave it and just make a redundant anchor). Did a lot of pruning to the lower access road, though the next party will likely want a hand saw for a couple of branches towards the top. There is (what appears to be a new) boulder in the 2nd pool of the long rappel (R8) that the rope likes to wrap itself around. Managing the rope from above the pool as you descend can help mitigate this. The same is true of a new log on R4 - if you don’t manage the rope from above as your are descending, it can get caught on the log and give an undesired fireman brake to the rappeller. The lake is extra full right now - there is no land to be found, so we needed to swim all the way to the other side of the Kachess river to the trail (same exit path as on the gpx track… just without any land to walk on)
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| Great | Low 
| Full wetsuit
| Normal | 5 hours
| 6 people Intermediate to Expert | Michelle (60 reports) | |
Comment: Don't judge a canyon by its approach hike, or something like that. We were very pleasantly surprised by how great this canyon turned out to be after the crappy approach down from the upper parking. Once the canyon starts the rock and rappels are great quality all the way to the lake. We combined this with Mineral later in the day (9hrs total for both canyons)
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| Ok | Moderate Low
| | Normal | | 5 people | Coops (132 reports) | |
Comment: We tried the "new" approach, and were disappointed. I think on my next visit I'd go back to the original upper approach again.
The bushwhacking took its toll on the group, and arriving at the canyon about 200ft lower than the drop-in, we started from R5 instead. Water level was low. If you like getting in the flow it may not be worth doing until a little rain tops it up. Still a beautiful canyon. The water level in Kachess Lake was high so there was a swimming exit (surprising since Cle Elum lake looked very low on the drive in). I'll spend some time merging the two approach routes on the map, and clarifying some of description about both options. | |||||||
| Great | Moderate
| Full wetsuit
| | | Logan (60 reports) | ||
Comment: We did an alternate approach without a shuttle, hiking across an abandoned dirt road following the 3,000' elevation line. The first 2 miles of this road are drivable. The canyon has some great rappels in the flow. Very unique geology in a canyon cut deep into gray rock walls. Rappels #2, 5, and 7 are particularly fun. Back to back rappels with sublime views of the lake below with glacier blue water, and then a pleasant swim across the warm lake water to a proper trail make for a great day. Worth repeating.
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| Good | Low
| Thin wetsuit
| Easy |  4 hours
| 4 people Intermediate to Expert | Coops (132 reports) | |
Comment: The bushwhacking approach wasn't fun. We followed the GPS track pretty closely, but felt there must be a better route. We met the canyon at a steep dirt slope, with a small cairn marker below, from which a few minutes of down-scrambling led us to R1.
We were also surprised at the 3-stage setup of R8 as it didn't seem the obvious setup, however we didn't have problems getting down. For R10 we found a tree set back from the edge with black webbing but no quick-link. We setup some blue webbing + rap-ring on neighboring tree closer to the water. We also discussed the possibility of doing Incognito & Mineral back-to-back in future - especially if you cut directly to the top of the technical section on Mineral having done Incognito first.
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| Ok | Low
| Thin wetsuit
| Easy | 4 hours
| 3 people Advanced | Blueshade (55 reports) | |
Comment: (Previously) listed times are inaccurate. We completed this somewhat comfortably in what would have been under 4hrs but we combined it with Mineral (instead of exiting at the trail junction). Even with BOTH canyons we finished in 7.5hrs TOTAL. So not only easily doable in a weekend, easily doable in a day by efficient crews.
The long rappel of approximately 140' (currently listed as R8) should be ideally bolted midway in order to bring less rope (on what is otherwise currently a 3 stage drop)- especially if combining with Mineral which has shorter drops and otherwise unnecessarily bringing extra rope along. Also, this R8 drop and others were not bolted perfectly. The pull (especially on R8) drags the rope across the bolt causing extra friction and, potentially, rope damage.
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| Amazing | Moderate Low
| Full wetsuit
| Normal | 8 hours
| 6 people Advanced | Jakehuddleston (38 reports) | |
Comment: An amazing day out exploring this new canyon. Beautiful lake views on the approach, perfect water levels, sunshine in many parts of the canyon. The rappels in this canyon are very beautiful, and it's nonstop action the entire way down. A good time. Disappointed there were no pools deep enough to jump, but that's okay. The scenery more than made up for it.
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