The club
About
A small fellowship, a long habit of going, and a record that claims 1954.
Cascade Paddle Club is a handful of men who canoe. We camp. We cook more than we need. We compare hulls and paddles with the seriousness other people save for baseball. Then we go to work on Monday and wait for the next Saturday that will have us.
The club has been at this, in one name or another, since 1954. The early logbooks live in a crate in Brick’s garage, under a tarp that has itself become historical. We have not typed every year. We will. For now the site has this month, a couple of recent trips, and a few pages from the boxes so the claim of a long memory is not only a claim.
We keep the geography a little vague on purpose. The lakes are in the Northwest mountains. If you already know them, you will recognize the light. If you do not, there is still plenty of water in the world, and other clubs besides this one.
We are not a school, not a livery, and not a recruiting office. The crew is fairly stable. New faces tend to arrive the long way: a meet-up with the Olympic Peninsula Paddlers, a weekend with the Kootenai Canoe Circle, a joint trip with the Deschutes bunch. Someone paddles well, laughs at the right time, and gets invited back. Families are real and mentioned when they matter to the fellow doing the writing. They do not come on these trips.
On the water we wear life vests. That is not a slogan. That is how you get to be the kind of club that still has a 1954.
If you want to reach us, there is a contact page. It is temporarily out of sorts. The reliable method remains knowing one of us.