Surfski Knowledge Base

This is how rumors get started..
Kevin Olney
06/19/23 #34013

Wildside Relay, 7/9

allipp@aol.com
06/20/23 #34014

Let's do it!

Dan Mayhew
06/20/23 #34015

For us folks without any experience with the Wild side Relay, can you describe it?

Jodie Kur
06/20/23 #34016

Two person team, 4 legs. Leg 1 starts in Stevenson and paddles to Home Valley for the relay exchange. Leg 2 is Home Valley to Drano Lake, another exchange. Leg 3 is Drano to the Hatchery and Leg 4 is the Hatchery to Bingen Marina. While one team member is completing each leg the other along with any support crew is driving to the next exchange point and prepping to go. I guess it would be a 4 person team if you ran a double. Kevin Olney might argue there is a place for a 6 person team paddling the Carbonology triple ski. Hope this helps
Brian K

Az
06/20/23 #34017

I shuttled Kirk & Kevin my first year in the Gorge. It was Four legs, usually tag team with 2 racers. Kirk did legs 1 & 2, Stevenson-Home Valley and Drano-Hatchery. Kevin did legs 2 & 4, Hime Valley-Drano and Hatchery-Bingen.

Nice grassy spot to hang at the end. https://surfski.wiki/start?do=search&id=start&q=Wildside

David Scherrer
06/20/23 #34019

Sending out the Barnacle Rallying cry!!

Waterman Larry
06/20/23 #34020

I'm too new to have done a Wildside historical. But over the last 6 years, I have heard many a tale of those rugged, fun races. Thanks for the summary Brian K. Let's do it!

Larry Goodson

Duncan Howat
06/21/23 #34021

One of JD's problems with the race was parking at the exchanges, although things moved along fairly quickly up the river. The Hatchery was the biggest problem.Then you had people like Reivers who couldn't find the exchange points, and just paddled on forever, no one knew where he was. Tough race to safety boat for .Mostly done by 2 man teams, although 4 wouldn't be bad and might use less cars. If it was casual, perhaps permits would,t be necessary. The exchanges were exciting, particularly the first one , Home Valley. JD did the best fear of ,you name it safety speech ever, and if you hadn't done the river “strongly” said to drop out.

allipp@aol.com
06/21/23 #34022

JD also checked everyone's leashes. He gave a good tug on suspect leashes, and some broke. He also chastised those of us with grass stuck in the velcro, showing how poorly the velcro held. I think he let us race, but we all had to clean out the grass and other detritus stuck in them!

Nicholas Cryder
06/21/23 #34023

Kevin, this the best whatcom paddler subject line I've ever read. You could work in advertising with ease, not that I'd wish that on you.

for my whatcom paddling friends, I'll be at the Wednesday nighter tonight to say hi, and rumor has it I am going to try to sit in a V8 with a paddle in my paws and just see what happens.

John Rybczyk
06/21/23 #34024

Yes, JD would really check those leashes and he did not like the grass stuck in the velcro. The worst part was that if you had a crappy, grass-clogged leash, he wouldn't yell at you, he would just be profoundly disappointed in you, which was way worse. Some things I recall about that race, it was before some of us Bellinghamsters had discovered or explored the Gorge. We would get down there a couple days before the race and, instead of doing shuttle runs, we would just do laps at the Hatch, like were in Bellingham! Most of us stayed at the Timberline Campground and we would get a little rowdy (some of the Barnacles weren't even Barnacles yet), often getting yelled at by the campground manager for violating quiet hours. One particular night got so bad (Bullit Whiskey being the cause), that Larry G. swore off drinking.

I had several relay partners over the years, but Roger Lamb most frequently. We would use his car, but he was very particular about it, spreading many, many towels around the interior so that I wouldn't mess it up too badly. Again, he wouldn't get mad if I messed up his car, he would just be dissapointed in me. He liked to do legs 1 and 3 and I liked 2 and 4, so that worked out well. Roger would almost always fall off the boat a couple of times during leg one, so we would spend the rest of the race catching back up to everyone. The 4th leg was the Hatch to Bingen run, which is not a run that we normally do nowadays. That leg would start out mixed up and crazy around the Hatch and then you had to worry about the bridge and crushing yourself on a stanchion. After that, the waves, if there were any, would line up nicely, but the last mile always seemed to be a flat grind, which I liked for some reason.

After the race, we would all go to a Mexican restaurant in Bingen for a buffet dinner and awards ceremony, the race was small enough to do that.

Paul Reavley
06/21/23 #34025
Nicholas - yours would definitely be a positive rumor!

Paul Reavley
06/21/23 #34026

I should probably wait a bit longer to see how current memories comply with past reports…, but here are some of the whatcom paddler threads from past Wildside Relays

Old Wildside Race Reports https://surfski.wiki/races/gorge_race_reports#wildside_relay_race

JD's Race Map https://surfski.wiki/_media/races/gorge/wildside.jpg

Paul Reavley
06/21/23 #34027
And you have to watch out for the sturgeon

https://www.facebook.com/groups/gorgewindsurfers/permalink/1420192098834087/

David Scherrer
06/21/23 #34028
Sorry, I think the image is BS..Sturgeons are bottom feeders.

Paul Reavley
06/21/23 #34029

David - I'm not making any claims about the veracity of that photo, but I do know that bottom feeders do not necessarily spend all of their time on the bottom. Some sturgeon also are not just bottom feeders.

From wikipedia: “Many sturgeons leap completely out of the water,[35] usually making a loud splash which can be heard half a mile away on the surface and probably further under water. ”

Reivers Dustin
06/21/23 #34031
As a wee lad working at the Reynolds Metals plant in Troutdale (now long gone) we would drive upriver. A favorite stop was the I-5 exit at Corbett. There was a smelly old tavern there. Lots of photo's of before any dams, and some after-dam shots of monster Sturgeon. There was one they had hauled out with a rigged-up tow truck. I was there in 80's and would guess the photo was maybe '50's. I guess there's always been trick-photography. But doughtful them old boys had access to it. They told stories of sturgeon breaching sometimes, but very unusual. t'm told they don't fight the hook like that and David knows a thing or two about fish. Some of those old beer drinkers looked like bottom feeders to me. (I kept listening carefully for banjo music.)

Along the same line, there's a working dive school in Portland somewhere. My brother thought he could do that for some bucks. He hung out there for a bit checking it out. One of the jobs divers get is gate cleanout for some of those dams. I guess they like to talk about the big animals they bump into down there. It tends to weed out the less serious-minded potential divers. We knew about sturgeon when I was a kid. There was a fish farm up in Lacom, Or. They had a couple of pet sturgeon and one big old beast. But one Sunday morning the workers came in to find an empty pond. I guess it was too easy to back the old Dodge power wagon in there and haul that fish out. Folks in Linn County were pissed, but what can you do?

John Rybczyk
06/21/23 #34032

Here's an interesting pict from the Stillaguamish delta (Port Susan) a few years back, the low tide, stranding a bunch of Sturgeon. I was told that these were from the Columbia River stock and they will come this far north on occasion to feed.

James Schulz
06/21/23 #34034

First run I ever did in the Gorge was the day before my first Wildside Relay. I ran into JD and Kim at Bob’s Beach and we did Bob’s to Home Valley. They took off like a shot. About halfway through the run a seven-foot Sturgeon surfaced parallel to my boat few feet away. I haven’t seen another one since.

Jim

David Scherrer
06/21/23 #34035

Ok I stand corrected (Ed. Interestingly David reported seeing a sturgeon during a Gorge run not long after this…)

2025 Update: JD Davies retired in 2024 and expressed a desire to revive the Wildside Relay. No firm plans heard of yet in early 2025