Spending time with family and friends, longer daylight hours, the sweet smell of barbeque sauce burning on the grill, brilliant sunshine, seasonal ripe fruit, snoozing in a hammock, white sandy beaches, tanning lotion, crushed ice margaritas and heading out to one of our Northwest Rivers. That all sounds like the perfect ingredients for an enjoyable summer to me! I hope everyone has had the opportunity so far to get out and enjoy your favorite rivers this summer. Talking about favorite rivers, it was good reading and hearing back from numerous club members who have had the good fortune to seize the boating opportunity out on some of the high flowing rivers of the Northwest during late spring of this year, like the Grande Ronde River and North Fork John Day River to name a few. Kudos to those of you river rats who made it out there! Myself, I spent several weeks up on the Northern Washington Rivers where the higher than normal snow pack conditions and record high temps kept the rivers flowing higher and longer than during a normal snowpack year.  

 

 I’m pleased to announce that the OWA will be offering the Wilderness First Aid Training this autumn 2021. The location for the WFA will be McIver State Park just several miles south of the town of Estacada and along the Lower Clackamas River. The dates for this training event will be Saturday, Sept 25th and Sunday, Sept 26th. Travis Reid with Oregon Rescue LLC will lead the instruction for this training course. The sign-up for this 2-day training is on the Oregon Whitewater Association webpage: oregonwhitewater.org located under Upcoming Events. Also, we have several campsites reserved at McIver State Park for those individuals helping out with training, members traveling a fair distance for the training or for those who are enrolled and would prefer to camp at McIver Park. The reserved campsites will be shared with other members. 

 

Plans are currently moving forward for a September 8th OWA group club meeting at the Flying Pie Pizzeria, located at 7804 SE Stark St in East Portland for the second Wednesday in Sept. However, no formal announcement has been made yet because of the ever changing conditions restaurants are dealing with because of the resurgence of Covid-19. An email will be sent out the first week in September notifying club members if we can proceed with a group meeting at Flying Pie Pizzeria or a zoom meeting will be required.  We plan on continuing to stream the in-person meetings on Zoom for those who prefer to attend remotely and our members outside of the Portland area.