The whitewater side of the club is well on way for breaking 100 trips on the calendar for the year, and that's not counting the fall trips which will be published later in the year!  WOW what a success! 

Jenefer Monroe is our current Whitewater Trips Chair, and she did a bang up job coordinating and getting folks excited about an upcoming year of paddling adventures.  Before we got down to business we rendezvoused for a paddle on the South Fork Snoqualmie River starting at Twin Falls State Park.  We had close to 25 boaters that came out to play.  The paddle went fantastic and we were able to split into smaller pods on the water so it didn't feel so busy.  We even had some kayakers that had not been on the water in quite some time, it was nice catching up and meet new people.  We had plenty of rolls, sick ferries, great eddy catching and even some catch-on-the-fly surf waves. Flawless.  During the paddle, we also had some great entertainment in Waskowitz Canyon which is a class II+/III section that provides some fun boofing, wave crashing and much much more.

David and Toria Elliott live on the SF Snoqualmie River, so we met up at their house afterwards to get some business done, socialize without our helmets on and pig out on pizza and beverages.  We had approximately 35 party goers.  The party was a ton of fun, we were lucky to have nice skies and a great view of the river for people to catch up outside on the deck, while others took turns rummaging through the calendar. 

We worked hard to ensure the 2018 Whitewater Beginners will have a steady stream of available class II and II+ trips coming out of graduation into summer.  We also wanted to provide plenty of trips so folks could achieve a "7 River Challenge" sticker and hopefully get the grand daddy sticker for finishing the 7 Challenge Rivers which include: Sauk, Sol Duc, Stilliguamish, Wenatchee, White Salmon, Nisqually, and Nooksack Rivers.  Thanks Kanako for your hard work with this fun challenge!

With the amount of trips signed up just at the party, this puts us already at par with recent years, and tracking towards our goal for the year of 100 trips.


Trip Leading Incentives for 2018

Lottery drawing
Each quarter there will be a prize of $150 gift certificate to Kayak Academy.  Each quarter there are new focuses so we can achieve our goals for each timeframe

• Q1 - 1 entry per trip lead in this time frame.  Drawing 4/2/18
• Q2 - 1 entry per 2/2+ trip lead.  Drawing 7/2/18
• Q3 - 1 entry per multi-day trips lead.  Drawing 10/1/18
• Q4 - 1 entry per paddler on your trips for the entire year.  Drawing 1/2/19

Stay tuned for the winners on an upcoming WKC newsletter article!

Reimbursement Incentives
As you know the club is working hard at providing and encouraging members to take a rescue, safety and CPR/First Aid class.  We have put together a few incentives to try and reach these goals..

1. Lead 1 trip in the 2/2+ range and you get the 1/27 or 2/11 CPR/First Aid Course for free
2. Lead 2 trips total for the year and you get 1/2 off the cost of the river safety class

You of course have to lead your trips before reimbursement, but none-the-less we want paddlers to take advantage of these classes.

At the Party
David and Toria offered up a couple of bottles of booze (post holiday clean out the booze cabinet - haha!) to the person with the most trips posted that day on the calendar.  Due to people leaving early and/or declining the booze, these ended up going to Ken.  Party on Ken!  We expect to see those at an upcoming post-paddling event !