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We need Volunteers!! Click HERE
Sign up to race!! Click HERE
THE 67th ANNUAL MOTHER'S DAY WHITEWATER FESTIVITIES & RACES Will be May 9-11, 2025 on the rio grandE in Beautiful Pilar, nm. RACES WILL BE sATURDAY MAY 10
Online REGISTRATION is Open Click HERE
full schedule Here
Main race organizing will be at Quartzite.
Thank You to Our 2024 MDR Sponsors!
NM Tradition, 60+ Years of
Mother's Day Whitewater Races
The Mother’s Day Races were founded in the 1950’s by Los Alamos paddle boater and LANL employee, Jim “Stretch” Fretwell. After competing at Colorado’s FiBark for many years, Stretch decided to start a paddle race closer to home on the Rio Grande, now known as the Pilar Racecourse. The races were supported by Los Alamos’s Explorers: Post 20, The Atomic City Citizens Band Radio Club, The Los Alamos Fire Department to name a few. By the late 1960’s, an estimated 2000 spectators leap frogged their way downstream on Highway 68 to watch rafts and kayaks twist and turn through the whitewater.
Stretch eventually handed it over to the Adobe Whitewater Club who valiantly ran the races for over thirty years until they handed it over to NMROA in 2008. This year the Adobe Whitewater Club is working to expand the races and welcomes spectator, racer and sponsor enthusiasm and support!