It was about a two mile hike in to the salmon viewing area, and there were a fair number of people on the trail and at the viewing area -- a nice reminder of how remote we were on our kayak trip, where I think we saw maybe five other faces in five days.
There were loads of salmon, for sure. We stayed there for a while and watched the salmon going up through the rapids. They "stage" below the rapids, and when you get up close to the water, you can see that there are lots of salmon just swimming in place in the eddies. You could dip a net in and come up with a net full of salmon (which is why that's not allowed, I suppose). Some of the salmon have flies hooked in their fins, so you can watch a particular one for a while; some of them stay below the rapids for a long time. At one point, I was sitting on a rock by the water, and a salmon practically jumped in my lap, surprising the heck out of me!
If you want to you can watch a little video of the salmon running (12MB). I didn't have time to edit it, so it's not "all action," but you get a sense of how often they are jumping in any given spot in the rapids. Oh, and you might want to hit mute, because the river is loud! What you can't see very well from the video is the salmon that were "skittering" up the rapids. There were more of them than the ones that jump up or hop up.
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