This past weekend I attended the annual Friend of the River Banquette and awards dinner honoring Yvon Chouinard and Bill Lockyer. I've always been a fan of Friends of the River and feel they are doing good work. When Bjorn dropped me a line to see if i'd be interested in donating a guide trip to their silent action to help raise money for their causes, of course i said yes.
Friends of the river was founded in 1973 during the struggle to save the Sanislaus River. Now they are a Nationally recognized organization famous for their depth of expertise in river ecology and for developing innovative and successful grassroots campaigns to help protect California's waterways. Friends of the River has led successful campaigns to protect the Tuolumne, Kern, Merced, Upper Klamath, Kings, American, Carson, Walker, Sisquoc and other rivers, as well as Big Sur creek, Cache and Sespe. If you car about the future of our rivers and would like to see them keep flowing free, i urge you to become a member.
The dinner was held at the historic officers club at the Precidio in San Francisco. It was a heck of a night. A great crowd and excellent atmosphere. The annual banquette serves as a forum to say thanks to the loyal and dedicated donors that the success of Friends of the River depend on and also help generate more revenue through a silent and live auction to keep the efforts going. Another focus of the event was to honor a couple influential environmentalist for their respective contributions. This year, the Peter H. Behr award went to Bill Lockyer, California's Treasurer, for his work on helping stop the Auburn Dam. The Mark Dubious Award went to Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia clothing, for his great contributions to the environment world wide.
Here's Yvon receiving the award. That's Royal Robbins on the right in the crowd.
There was a standing ovation that lasted for minutes after Yvon was done speaking.
Yvon with his river rock award.
2 comments:
nice, sounds like a great night. i actually went to high school with bjorn. i used to see him on our home river all the time (upper sac), but i haven't seen him in a few years.
It was a good party, that's for sure. Thanks for making it down the hill.
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