swimming

If you have ever fallen in love with this or any river, we invite you to join us for this spectacular day of organized chaos where 400+ river-lovers jump in their rafts, kayaks, inter tubes, canoes, drift boats – or maybe even dawn a snorkel mask – uniting to scour the banks and bottom of 15 miles of riverway from Barton Park to Clackamette Park where the Clackamas empties into the Willamette.

Get wet, do the Truffle Shuffle, race your neighboring POD to extract the biggest hulking piece of rusted dilapidated detritus you’ve ever seen and help restore the Clackamas back to its pristine state! We will thank you. The salmon will thank you. And you might just find yourself looking at the world through new eyes after the day ends.

The annual Down the River Clean Up is an on-the-river, 15-mile clean up made possible by a rich network of river recreationalists, outdoor companies, environmental organizations, government entities, local community leaders, and hopefully you!

An upwards of 2,200 community members and volunteers have joined together each year for the past nine years to remove over 42,800 pounds of trash from the Clackamas River. Our dream is to create a community where everyone loves their rivers as much as we do and that some day, we can throw a party on the river without having to clean it up.

The Clackamas River is home to old-growth forests, bird species, steelhead, and is one of the last remaining wild salmon runs in the lower Columbia basin. While the river provides healthy habitat for wildlife, it also supplies the Portland metropolitan area with fresh drinking water. Due to the bounty, beauty and close proximity to urban areas, the Clackamas River has become known for attracting recreationalists of all kinds, including kayakers, rafters, tubers, anglers, and more. The high-use of the river and its nearness to cities, unfortunately, brings in pollutants and unwarranted litter.

Join us in turning restoration into recreation….

Join the 2,000-person flotilla of inner tubes and other watercraft to sail across the mighty Willamette River in a celebration of our river – including the recreation it offers as well as the restoration it has undergone in recent years.  

New to TBF this Year:

* Outlandish Watercraft Award

* Best-of-Cruise Costume Award

* Paddlers parade - kayakers, canoeists, dragon boaters, crew teams, SUP’ers

* Floating barge with live music