Saturday September 18, 2021 marked the 9th annual Community River Cleanup Paddle Event hosted by Elements Adventure Company and the Mabel Lake Community Club. Charles Ruechel, family in tow did his first clean up in 2013 with the aim of building community and raising awareness about how humans impact our local waterways. This year we had our largest volunteer turn out yet!
We started off the morning by picking up trash at the Meadows campground in Cherryville before launching our 10 canoes to clean up downstream 20km to the take-out at Wilsey Dam. We were greeted at the take out by a few more clean up volunteers as well as Russ Collins of the Mable Lake Community Club who loaded up the trash and treated us to tea and donuts.
For the past 9 years, our community river clean up has alternated between river sections above and below the Wilsey dam. This year’s effort came around the same time as the announcement that BC Hydro will decommission the Wilsey dam. The intention is to dismantle the dam to restore the river closer to how it was prior to its construction in 1929 and allow salmon to once again access to historical spawning habitat. It is unknown when exactly this decommissioning will take place, but we look forward to seeing more salmon up stream in the future.
If you would like to become involved with this grassroots clean-up effort in 2022 please contact us (admin@elementsadventures.com) to get on the notification list. We welcome anyone with river paddling experience in a canoe, kayak, SUP, or other human-powered craft to participate in this fun, social event. As a special thanks, all participants are eligible to receive 10% off any Elements Adventures paddling school courses for the next calendar year.
