White caps were beginning to take shape on Flathead Lake on a recent Saturday morning as participants in the Flathead Lakers annual Poker Paddle returned to Boettcher Park.

“It was a little choppy,” reported Craig McClure, who paddled a sea kayak from the starting line at Boettcher to the far side of Salish Point and back, along with his wife, Dayna. “I was doing a little surfing on the way back.”

Gary Teggeman, who paddled his own hand-built wooden kayak across the bay, admitted that riding waves would have been more fun “if I was 50 instead of almost 80.”

Dori Gilels and Michael Beltz strong-armed their SUPs (stand-up paddleboards) to shore across a bumpy stretch of water, completing the mid-length route as the wind and waves picked up.  

“But we did it with a smile,” Gilels said.

Another woman on a SUP was exhausted by the last stretch and Search and Rescue brought her safely into the dock, while a man on a jet ski collected her paddle board.

The event offers three courses, ranging in distance from 3.5 miles to Salish Point, 5.5 miles to a dock in Mission Bay, and 7 miles to Bird Point before turning back to Boettcher. Each paddler collects waterproof cards along the way, and the highest and lowest hands won prizes in the family-friendly poker game.

This year, Matt Sorge held the winning hand and Luke Sandry, who swam the race, posted the worst hand. 

This year, 56 paddlers participated and by 11 a.m., around 22 were still making their way back to Boettcher – mostly on kayaks and stand-up paddleboards, although a few swam the distance and two paddled a canoe.

Thirty-six volunteers helped organize the event, with seven members of Lake County Search and Rescue keeping a close eye on participants, as well as a Lakers safety boat and a jet ski patrolling the courses. 

Jim Elser, director of the University of Montana's Flathead Lake Biological Station, pulled into the beach aboard a kayak. He noted that the Flathead Lakers work closely with the bio station to monitor and protect the pristine water he had just paddled across.  

“They love the lake and help us protect it for the future,” he said of the partnership between the two organizations.

This marked Coby Gierke’s first Poker Paddle as executive director of the organization, a post he stepped into July 22, 2024. Instead of paddling, he was on shore, clutching binoculars and a walkie-talkie and monitoring reports from the sizeable support team. 

The annual event helps the Lakers build a bridge to the public by “getting the community out on the water and … giving them a good reason to come enjoy the lake and connect with the resource that we're trying to protect.”

This year’s event coincided with another paddling event, the Dragon Boat Festival, which Gierke suspected might have brought their numbers down. Last year’s event had a record 143 participants. He also thinks “a tightening economy” could be a factor.

THE FLATHEAD Lakers are certainly feeling the pinch, especially when it comes to federal dollars that help finance many of the organization's programs. Its annual budget has gone from around $500,000 last year to about $300,000 this year, forcing staffing cuts and reining in aspirations.

Especially devasting was the loss of a sizeable grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that would have financed DNA water quality sampling and testing for the organisms that cause swimmer’s itch.

The Lakers would have received $182,000, while the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes were to receive around $5 million to build testing facilities at Boettcher and Salish Point in Polson, Elmo Tribal Park, Blue Bay Campground and other locations, and deploy sophisticated environmental DNA testing developed at the Flathead Lake Biological Station.

Instead, the Lakers opted to pursue a much more modest project of testing water for E. coli bacteria.

Another project that’s been scaled back would have helped landowners around the lake plant buffer gardens and restore eroded shoreline in order to prevent storm runoff from carrying nutrients and pollutants into the lake. They’re now planning to partner with Polson Bay Golf Course to create a single demonstration project.

The goal is to help landowners “realize that they can protect water quality, they can keep nutrients from entering the lake, and have a great view and a beautiful shore,” he said.

Other projects include the continued publication of the Living in the Flathead Guide, a comprehensive guide to helping old-timers and newcomers alike learn responsible land and water stewardship.

The Lakers will also work with the Western Montana Conservation Commission to reach out to property owners with high-risk septic systems and encourage them to either clean the tanks regularly or have them replaced.

“We’ll also let them know that there are resources available to them to help offset the cost and that they can have a real impact on water quality,” he said. “And the places that they swim are going to be the ones that are most affected if they don't.”

Another outreach project, funded by a grant from the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, targets boat owners from other states with known invasions of aquatic invasive species. In tandem with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, the Lakers will contact boat owners before they make their trip to Montana, which remains one of only a handful of states in the country where there are no freshwater mussels.

Not only do these aquatic invaders wreak havoc, Gierke said, “But once they're here, we can't get rid of them.”

In addition to the Poker Paddle, supporters of the Flathead Lakers can also help make a difference by attending this year’s Summer Soirée – the nonprofit’s biggest fundraiser of the year – on Aug. 7 in Big Arm. As of last Saturday, around 30 tickets remained and are available at www.flatheadlakers.org.

“We need our partners, we need our members and we need our supporters,” Gierke said, “now more than ever.”