Sense of Place: Crag Rats turn 100

HOOD RIVER — In their final event of season 16 on April 15, Sense of Place brought Crag Rat Chris Van Tillburg to speak about the group’s century of work as the oldest Search and Rescue (SAR) and mountaineering group in America.

“Cosmopolitan” is how the New York Times described the Crag Rats in 1931. “And we are still cosmopolitan today,” said Van Tillburg. “[We] have solid rescue mountaineers who are orchardists and lawyers and school teachers, farmers, carpenters. People come from all different backgrounds, and the things that bring us together are this love for the high alpine, the passion for the mountains, and the desire to get out of bed at night and go ski up into a storm,” all backgrounds united under the black and white buffalo check shirts they’ve worn since the beginning.

“I’m not exactly sure where we’ll be in 100 years. I hope we maintain some traditions. I hope we keep calling our president Big Squeak and our secretary Pip Squeak,” said Van Tillburg. “Some traditions we absolutely have to get rid of. It wasn’t until 1990 that we let our first women join as a rescue members.” Van Tillburg spoke about how it’s been important for them to hold onto the traditions that serve them while modernizing and professionalizing their operations so they can best serve the people they rescue. “We made this slow metamorphosis from a strong social club that was an expert mountain rescue group to a professional level mountain rescue team that had a strong social life.”

To accompany this lecture, Fox produced an episode of the associated podcast, “Hear in the Gorge,” that features the story of one of the Crag Rat rescues. Fox interviewed two Crag Rats and the father of a boy who had been successfully rescued by the Crag Rats in 2013. When Fox shared anecdotes from this story, Crag Rats in the audience of the lecture commented on how emotional and meaningful it was to hear the impacts of their missions after the fact as often they don’t get to know what happens after their rescues are complete.

This season also marks the last year Sense of Place will be under the umbrella of Mt. Adams Institute (MAI), as the institute will be formally dissolving at the end of 2026. This comes after changes to personnel and federal funding cuts made it impossible for the organization to maintain its current operations.

“We are now setting sail after 16 years and becoming our own nonprofit,” said Fox. It will continue to run educational lectures on and in the Gorge and are currently opening the call for proposal for Season 17 until May 15. “We’re looking for folks who have unique knowledge of the cultural and natural history of the Gorge,” said Fox.

This and other Sense of Place lectures are available on MAI’s Youtube channel, and the podcast is available on soundcloud and other podcast platforms under Hear in the Gorge.

See Entertainment for information about their upcoming centennial celebration. A more in depth story that peaks behind the curtain of Crag Rat operations will be featured in a future edition of Columbia Gorge News.