[Awclist] The Mother's Day Races are back!

[Cliff Loucks]

A Whitewater Festival is in the works for Mother's Day weekend (May 11-12) at Pilar.  We're bringing back the full complement of the races, and then some.  The schedule (still finalizing) is attached.  The River Rendezvous is combined with the Festival this year.  Yates Coulter has come back on board to design the slalom course for us. We have support from NRS, Aire, Werner, Fours Corners River Sports, Colorado Kayak Supply, Jack's Plastics, Smith's Optics, and the Pilat Yacht Club, with more still stepping up with donations for prizes and/or material support.  4 Corners has donated a Jackson Villain Kayak ($1000 value!) that we will be raffling off.  We anticipate the entry fees to cover the expenses of the events so the money brought in from the raffle can be donated to non-profits such as Amigos Bravos and Uncle Steve's Rio Grande Restoration efforts.  Watch the NM River Outfitter Organization's website for updates: www.nmroa.org. 

We'll be using the slalom gates that Tim and Mary Scofield have kept in the storage shed for years now.  We, of course, will be extremely grateful for volunteer help from any of you.  General logistics, race timing/safety, radio communications from Lone Juniper to Quartzite and from Quartzite to County Line will be greatly appreciated.

I'm also trying to piece together a timeline kind of history of the races.  Stretch Fretwell started them in 1957 after tiring of driving to Salida for FibArk (which started in 1949!).  Thanks to Ohio Knox for pointing me to an article in the July 1969 edition of The Atom (a LANL magazine or was it LASL back then?).  The article is attached here.  I'd greatly appreciate any tidbits of history you can pass my way.  Anything will help, even if it's nothing more than:

* the slalom course was in the rock garden in 19xx.

* the slalom was at Big Rock in 1970 and I watched Cliff bounce off Big Rock upside down, or was that 1971?  No wait that was both years!

* I lost my right flip-flop watching the race at Albert's Falls in 1974, any one seen it? 

Thanks very much and hope to see many of you at the meeting Tuesday night!

--Cliff


_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
The 3Rs: Rafting, Riding, Recovering*

Cliff Loucks
Albuquerque, Nuevo México
at work: 505-844-9098
at play: 505-604-1254

*Recovering = quality beer time


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: MDRGW Festival Preliminary Schedule.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 64214 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.swcp.com/pipermail/awclist/attachments/20130408/7975086c/attachment-0002.pdf>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: The Year of Under 21.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 3823353 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.swcp.com/pipermail/awclist/attachments/20130408/7975086c/attachment-0003.pdf>