IPC Updates: Keeping our Paddling Community “Current”!
Scott Hays, IPC President
IPC Updates: Keeping our Paddling Community “Current”!
Scott Hays, IPC President
Even in the depths of winter in Illinois, there’s still lots going on in the paddling community. Cold weather paddling for those that have the right gear, pool sessions for some others, while still others take their paddling excursions further South.
At the end of October, the IPC Annual Dinner saw a great presentation by Karen Miller on the Fox Water Trail and its recent “National Water Trail” designation (it joins the Kankakee here in Illinois with that status, while the Middle Fork of the Vermillion River near me is designated a “Wild and Scenic River”). Read about paddling the Fox elsewhere in this newsletter. The featured presentation was the inspiring and amazing story by Wally Werderich of his teams’ Guiness World Record-setting run down the Mississippi in just over 16 days. Look for the feature film-length documentary on their trip out soon – we’ll share the release on our website and Facebook page. All had a good time and enjoyed our host facility of Emmett’s Grill on the Fox in West Dundee.
The effort to pass the Illinois Water Access law continues, currently designated as HB4708 (previously designated as HB1568) with the current bill available for your review HERE. Much thanks to the many paddlers who participated in our recent Illinois Paddler’s Survey (results out VERY soon!) and to the groups who forwarded that along. We’ll be sending out legislative alerts as we move forward and are encouraging area paddlers to reach out to their local legislators to encourage their support and even their co-sponsorship of this bill. Along with our survey, we’ll be sharing other paddling information and fact sheets to refer to and share information with you as you help build support for our bill!
IPC looks forward to again tabling at Canoecopia this year in Madison, Wisconsin (March 7,8 and 9). We’re trying to get our Illinois paddling map as up to date as possible. The map is HERE and if you don’t see your river (and many downstate rivers are currently missing) we would very much like to add that information. Please send specific information about your river including locations or (even better) coordinates of public access points, the location of any hazards such as low-head dams and any other points of interest along the way to our Mapmaker, James Tracy.
On our IPC Board, we welcome our newest member, Secretary Mary Susebach. Mary lives in Kankakee, after a life detour down to North Carolina, but is originally from Lemont. Mary will be working on updating our member records to improve IPC communication with all of you!
Finally, we say goodbye to Board Member Frank Koehler and thank Frank for several years of dedicated service to the IPC. Frank’s departure has left us with an open IPC Board Director position. If you are interested, email your “paddler’s resume” and a short statement of why you’d like to be on the Board and what you’d like to be involved in to me, the IPC President.
Happy Paddling! (or maybe preparing to paddle very soon!)
Scott Hays, IPC President