Soap Lake canoe race canceled

Late summer meeting may resurrect event

SOAP LAKE — A canoe race in Soap Lake was canceled due to lack of leadership, but an area chamber of commerce director hopes it might be revived.

Soap Lake's Great Canoe Race was originally set to take place Saturday.

"Basically, it was a case of nobody came up to run the thing, and anybody from the chamber who might have been available was all tied up with the five-day Smokiam Days celebration," Soap Lake Chamber of Commerce Director Chuck Fogerson explained.

It's not the first time the race, which Fogerson said has gone by a variety of names since its inception, has experienced some technical difficulty.

It was originally supposed to debut the day when Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, which prompted the Soap Lake committee to reschedule for the second Saturday of July. Since then, the race was held every year since 1998.

Since then, Fogerson said, it's been a struggle to keep the race going because putting it on is so labor-intensive, requiring about 12 to 14 people on the committee to organize it.

More than 100 canoes have participated in past races, Fogerson said.

If anyone is interested in resurrecting the event, a meeting will be held later in the summer, before Labor Day, he noted.

"As of right now, it is just a case of nobody to do the work or the fund-raising," Fogerson said.