Plumbing and Piping - Toilet gurgles when washer drains

I have recently observed bubbling and gurgling from the toilet bowl when the washing machine is draining. The washer is at the far upstream end of the waste pipe. The toilet is the last stop before it exits the house. In between are the kitchen sink and tub/shower in that order. There is a vent stack at the washer, the kitchen sink, the shower, and one stack for both the toilet and bathroom sink.

The gurgling would indicate to me that there is a venting problem. Is this correct? There isn't any backup anywhere that I can see.

Yep .. according to my son-in-law-plumber .. vents can an do plug, he mentioned things like leaves, birds, snakes, squirlels , etc ... so you need to get the vents cleaned out , he said he usually uses a plumbing "snake" from on the roof .... good luck!!

on a lot of jobs ...
the only guarantee is that Murphy always lends a helping hand . I know , he's my manager! ...dddon (whatever can go wrong, will.) a murphys rule

I kind of figured that, I just needed some confirmation that I wasn't making it up.

I try to keep wire downspout caps on all my stackpipes just for this reason, but they tend to blow off in the winter. A huge tree overhangs most of my roof.

You probably have a leaf problem then. Remove anything you can see by hand and then flush with a garden hose. Good luck.

OK, got on the roof with the snake on Sunday. Vent over the washer had maybe a minor blockage (it sort of got stuck once). Vent over the kitchen sink, however, was solid. The snake kept kinking up. I tried the hose and it filled it up until it overflowed onto the roof. So I grabbed a 10-foot length of EMT and tried that. It seemed to loosen it up somewhat, as the water started draining slowly. Then I just kept trying the snake until it finally broke through.

I think I'm getting one of those pagoda-like rain caps for this particular vent, which is the closest one to the tree.

Thanks for the advice.