SEVENTY48 is a 48-hour, seventy-mile, human-powered race from the downtown Tacoma waterfront to Port Townsend, Washington across the Salish Sea. It is not easy. Grown men and women cry. Experienced paddlers and rowers shudder.
The Platte Canyon High School team is a from a high school that sits at 9,300 feet in the Rocky Mountains, about an hour southwest of Denver. None of these kids had ever even seen salt water before this project. And then this event became a goal, a destination in their life. An event that will inspire and inform who they are, for the rest of their lives. They will one day tell their grandkids about when they were in high school and came to Tacoma to paddle a boat they made all the way to Port Townsend.
And more good news: Platte Canyon High School will return in the 2020 edition of the SEVENTY48. With a whole new team of kids with their eyes on our horizon, ready to become something bigger than they are now.
This is their story.
If you ever have doubts about the power of a clean, active waterfront to change a person and shape a future, just hit replay.