Columbia River cross-channel swim
After this brutal winter, hot days in the Gorge are almost too distant to imagine.
Ah, but that means summer will be that much sweeter this year. In less than a month you can register for one of summer’s most unusual and joyous events: the annual Roy Webster Cross Channel Swim across the Columbia River. The 1.1-mile swim, from Bingen to Hood River in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, is named for Leroy Webster. He was a Hood River pear grower who first swam the river with a few family members in 1942, when he was 41 years old. In recent years, over 500 people have made the swim, held at dawn every Labor Day.
Roy last swam across the river in 1988, and attributed his long aquatic career to converting to Mormonism in his 30s and giving up alcohol, tobacco and caffeine. He died in 1997 at 96.
This year is the 75th anniversary of Roy’s first swim, and to honor that, the Hood River Chamber of Commerce, the sponsor, is planning for a record 700 swimmers.
The day starts with a 5:30 a.m. registration at the Visitor Center, on Port Marina Drive, to pick up your luridly orange cap (all the better to see you in the swells), get assigned to a flight of 10 swimmers, and board the sternwheeler Columbia Gorge (which was built in Hood River, in the Nichols Boat Basin, once industrial and now a playground). Also, pose with Roy.
You can wear sweats to the boat, but you have to bag them at the gangplank, for retrieval after the swim. Or if you want to stay warm on the boat’s decks, wear clothes you don’t mind never seeing again. Wear them until the moment you get in line to jump in, shed them on the boat, and they’ll be sent to Goodwill (what I do so I can stand on the top deck and enjoy some of the best views in the gorge).
At 7 a.m. the sternwheeler leaves the dock at Hood River and chugs slightly upstream and across to Bingen, Washington. The boat anchors and when your flight is called, you join nine other swimmers, shivering on the gunnel. Someone yells, “3–2–1: JUMP!” and you obey. At 68 degrees, the water feels warm after the 40-degree air temp.
While the Columbia is not the wild river it was before dams turned it into a series of pools, it still has a powerful current and so you have to swim; a gentle heads-up social paddle will not cut it. Some years, the water is glassy, in others it has been oceanic, with swells so deep you are momentarily alone, deep in a trough. Flotillas of SUPers, kayakers and small boats keep you from drifting downstream, and presumably, barge traffic is held at bay during the swim. If you need to lean on a paddle board, that’s okay; resting is not a disqualifying event.
But the river’s still big water, deep and wild. I have to engage in a bit of self talk in the first moments after leaping off, to get over primordial fear. Once that’s conquered, it’s all a blast, all the way to the beach. The joy of being alive! Yes, that’s it.
Today Roy’s family’s runs The Fruit Company in the gorgeous Odell community, up the Hood River Valley. It buys cherries, blueberries and pears from the family’s Webster Orchards, and cheese, chocolates, cakes and other gift-worthy foods from other producers. Every Friday from 8 a.m. to noon is Fruit Friday, when you can buy fruit and gourmet foods at a big discount — items that didn’t meet the company’s high standards for its gift boxes. The company is on the Fruit Loop, an incredibly scenic driving tour through orchard country, framed by Mt. Hood’s beneficent grandeur.
For a weekend’s worth of other things to do in and around Hood River, including where to eat, explore, drink, stay, shop and mosey, see my book, Columbia Gorge Getaways. It’s at all Portland booksellers: Annie Bloom’s Books, A Children’s Place Bookstore, Broadway Books, Powell’s and Wallace Books, or online.
