Chehalis birthday fete evolved into an unofficial annual event

By Dian McClurg
The Chronicle

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How else would people remember to join the event every year?

Started 26 years ago by four men from the Pe Ell area celebrating a birthday, the River Run has never had an official organizer. Most years people don't even get around to hanging up fliers.

But every year, rain or shine, dozens of people show up to ride the Chehalis River from Pe Ell to Rainbow Falls State Park.

It's always on the second Saturday in April. And it's always a free-for-all, bring-your-own-boat, kids-invited, local event.

"They start all along the river," said longtime Pe Ell resident Kim Evans, watching from the Pe Ell bridge as boaters began getting into the river at about noon. "When it first started, you used to see all kinds of boats."

Tales are told of homemade boats making the run, everything from an enormous chunk of buoyant Styrofoam to a raft made with empty 2-liter soda-pop bottles lashed together.

This year, participants coming over the falls at the park reported passing a boat made with plastic barrels tied together and a piece of plywood on top.

With so many participants, each starting the run whenever they feel like it and stopping at many places along the way to warm up on days when it was cold outside, observers easily miss seeing all of the boaters. Sometimes it takes most of the day, at least six or so hours, for all the boats to finish the run.

It's not a race, though. The point, it seems, it just to meet up with old friends and try to make it all the way down the river to the falls. People often return to the Pe Ell area from all over just to participate in the River Run.

Spectators, and there are plenty including a few dozen at the park at the end of the run, watch the boats pass from the two or three bridges spanning the eight miles of river between Pe Ell and Rainbow Falls.
 
And if the audience becomes bored while waiting for hours as the disorganized parade of boats trickles by underneath them, who can blame them for occasionally spicing things up by throwing water balloons, paint balls, flowers and even beer at the boaters?

"Sometimes the people in the boats retaliate, though," said one woman at a vantage point a few miles downstream from Pe Ell.

She reminisced with her friends, all longtime participants or observers of the River Run, about a woman who one year rode the river with her shotgun, taking "pot shots" at the woods and at people who were throwing things from the bridges.

Who knows whether that particular story is true, but it is true that the River Run does have another sort of reputation. It's the kind of reputation that stems from an event where most of the participants and spectators are drinking, many of them underage.

"It's a time for the local animals to come out," said one man standing under the uncommonly hot sun at a bridge several miles downstream from Pe Ell. "The authorities never really wanted people to do this, you know, because it's always been a big alcohol thing."

This man claimed to be one of the original four men who started the River Run, but he didn't want to share his name.

"This has always been a nameless sort of deal," he said.

Halfway down the run is Doty — little town, population near 350, been around for about 115 years. Downtown Doty is not much more than a gas station and a rustic little shop owned by Phil McBride known as the Doty General Store.

"The River Run can be whatever you wish it to be," McBride said. "Some teenagers do it for a sense of adventure. They do chance things, but really there's a sense of enjoying the out-of-doors without regulations."

Not many people wear life jackets, and plenty of people ignore warnings against mixing water and alcohol, he said.

"But nobody's ever been hurt," McBride said. "And if they're being responsible and not trespassing, people don't mind."

John Hagerty of Chehalis, in his rubber raft, was the first over the falls this year.

"I saw it when I was camped here (at Rainbow Falls) with a Scout troop in '95, and I said, 'Boy I'd love to do that someday,' " Hagerty said.

Hagerty, who finished in just about two hours, made it down the falls without taking a swim. Bill Batchelar of Silver Creek, Lewis County, and Zach Williams of Packwood, Lewis County, weren't so lucky. Their canoe capsized halfway down the 10-foot falls, and both men tumbled out and dropped into the churning water. They were the second group to finish the run.

Dave Rush, the state park ranger in charge of Rainbow Falls, said one year a man was sucked underwater at the bottom of the falls several times before spectators were able to pull him out.

"Nobody's ever been seriously hurt, though, that I know of," Rush said. "The potential has been there, but they actually do a pretty good job of policing themselves."

Rush stood on the bridge at Rainbow Falls State Park, watching the boats tumble over the falls.

"Mostly I'm here for the entertainment," he said. "The people running it are doing a lot better. It used to be a little wilder, let's put it that way."

No one was hurt this year. And likely they'll all be back again, on the second Saturday in April 2005. Rain or shine.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company