Wow. Saturday's Blazing Paddles Paddlefest was an amazing sight for us to watch unfold. Brett Fisher's drone video footage gave us the opportunity to synthesize the vibrancy of Cleveland's hard working, historic, and scenic Cuyahoga River on that epic Saturday morning into a piece of video art. Do yourself a favor, pause the Olympics, and watch the video on a BIG screen! We'd love to know what your favorite moment was! If you were part of Saturday’s Blazing Paddles, please consider sharing the video or this post to spread the amazing river vibe that happened that amazing morning!

The Dirk S. VanEnkevort/Joseph H. Thompson tug/barge greatly added to the visual appeal of Blazing Paddles and many of our Dave Vasarhelyi Memorial Recreational Paddle and Float paddlers got an "up close and personal" sense of the scale of a freighter for the first time. Please keep that heft in mind the next time you find yourself face-to-face with a freighter in the Cuyahoga River’s Federal Navigation Channel. The Channel is sandwiched between the Cuyahoga River Water Trail and the recently designated Lake Erie Water Trail. Visit our “Know Before You Go on the Cuyahoga River” page for easy to adopt safety tips. The video also includes two cameos by the Walworth Run discharge pipe, the largest combined sewer overflow (CSO) on Cleveland’s west side.

Many thanks to our tireless volunteers, sponsors, Cuyahoga River Safety Task Force members, PHASTAR, Cuyahoga River industrial stakeholders, partner organizations, sponsors (Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, The Port of Cleveland, the Goodtime III, The Trust for Public Land, Environmental Design Group, Collision Bend Brewing Co., Flats Forward, & OHM Advisors), site hosts Cleveland Metroparks and Cleveland Rowing Foundation, North Coast Multisports, kayak livery partners Burning River Adventures and River Cruiser Kayaking, "after paddle" partners, and MOST of all, YOU, our Blazing Paddles paddlers! We'll see you at 4th annual Blazing Paddles Paddlefest on July 23, 2022!

2021 race results from run the land events

Below is the Blazing Paddles Paddlefest Drone Video and several photo galleries (including some perspective changers by Ron Skinner) and additional media. We have an adage “Only a fool documents their own event” and we are grateful to the photogs and videographers who preserved the memories of an AWESOME (we’ll even suggest historic) day on the Cuyahoga River. We’d like to think the ghost of Mayor Carl Stokes was smiling at the sight of his beloved city’s industrial river flowing with a tsunami of recreational paddlers.