hoodrivernews.com
HOOD RIVER NEWS | Hood River, Ore.
Wednesday, February 12, 2020 B1
Crag Rats Hut: ‘Premier Hood River Valley wedding
venue’ helps fund search and rescue
By EMILY FITZGERALD
News staff writer
When the Crag Rats relocat-
ed to a new building in Pine
Grove in the late 1960s, they
intended to use it just as they
had used their old building:
For meetings, training, and
their annual banquet.
They didn’t intend to run it
as a wedding venue. But that’s
exactly what they did.
“We rented it out occasion-
ally to the members for next
to nothing, and there really
wasn’t many outside entities
that used it unless they knew a
Crag Rats,” said longtime Crag
Rats member Bernie Wells.
“But then, little by little, we
started getting more inquiries
about renting it out.”
The two-stor y, moun-
tain-style lodge sits atop a
butte amongst the east hills of
the Hood River Valley, on land
donated by a Crag Rats mem-
ber when I-84’s expansion en-
croached upon their old club-
house near present-day Exit 62.
“Because of its location, it’s
a very pristine place … because
you get the view of both moun-
tains and all of the lower valley
so that’s why it’s a very good
venue for weddings and things
like that,” said Bill Pattison,
who joined the Crag Rats in
1953. Wells joined in 1957.
“As time went on,” Wells
said, “we kind of upgraded the
fees until we got to the point
where — heck, almost every
week — we were starting to
get a ton of inquiries about it,
and we decided that maybe
that would be the way we
would pay for the Crag Rats’
expenses.”
The volunteer search-and-
rescue organization began out
of a group of Hood River Valley
residents that climbed together
in the mid-1920s.
The organization was ini-
tially funded by investors and
donations from Crag Rats who
had passed, “And the demand
for search and rescue was
just peanuts in those days
up until … somewhere in the
‘70s, things began to heat up
from recreation, and I-84 was
finished,” said Pattison. “Up
until then, search and rescue
was minimal, and it was more
fun-and-games for the organi-
zation. Now, with the demand
for public recreation use of
the Gorge — we the Crag Rats
have followed along with that
demand for service for the
tourists.”
The Crag Rats are now the
oldest high-angle search and
rescue organization in the
United States and are fre-
quently called upon by the
Hood River County Sheriff’s
Department for search and
Photos courtesy of the Hood River History Museum
rescue operations. The Crag ORIGINAL Crag Rat building being built in 1932. The building is long gone, but some masontry overlooking Exit 62 is still visible.
Rats are subsidized by the
Sheriff’s Department for their
search and rescue services,
but the organization requires
outside funding for equipment
purchases and training.
“We try to keep up with all
the modern stuff,” said Wells.
“The budget is just like any
other budget, there’s never
enough money for everything,
so that’s one of the reasons that
we decided we had to actually
use the building as a venue for
public use.”
A small staff was contracted
to manage the business side
of the rentals as the operation
grew, but “nobody is paid on
the search and rescue side.
That is strictly all volunteer,”
Wells said.
Wells’ construction compa-
ny, Wells Construction, com-
See VENUE, page B10
HISTORIC image of the Crag Rat Hut in Pine Grove, which was built in 1968.
File photo Kirby Neumann-Rea
ON THE MAIN level of the Crag Rat Hut, Charlotte Jones and Bill Pattison look over old photos.
File photo Kirby Neumann-Rea
CRAG RAT Wes Mortensen explains rescue extraction methods at a 2018 event.
Submitted photos
THE BASEMENT, at left, serves as a secondary gathering space. The kitchen, at right, was recently expanded as part of a rennovation project.