Not as bad as it sounds, actually... he survived. Several people were in the right place at the right time to save this guys life, he simply got lucky that we all were nearby. If you're not familiar with the area, the Gore canyon has very steep canyon walls and a massive elevation drop in a short distance. It's Class 4 or 5 rapids, depending on how high the water is running. On top of that, there are only 2 ways thru the canyon... on the railroad tracks or down the river.
We were working South of the canyon, installing a new switch machine at a siding. We were supposed to go out the way we came in but I had never been thru the canyon so I asked the foreman in charge if we could hyrail thru the canyon in our trucks. He agreed, so we wrapped up our days work and headed into the canyon. Just as we got in the steepest parts of the canyon, we saw a solo kayak without anyone in it floating upside down in the river. We were pretty disturbed by that sight and were talking about what could have happened. A couple minutes later we got an emergency call over the radio from the Union Pacific dispatcher in Omaha, NE. We were being called on to assist with a drowning... within 15 seconds we came across a group of rafters that were dragging a guy who was limp up the river bank to the RR track. The guy was kayaking thru the Gore canyon SOLO... He had overturned and wasn't able to right himself or get out of his kayak and ended up drowning, after getting beat up by numerous boulders while submerged.
Several minutes behind him was a group of rafters, who just happened to have a satellite phone. They came into a calm pool in the river and spotted this guy, face down, floating in the water. One of the rafters immediately jumped in, grabbed the guy and took him to shore where he started CPR... after a few minutes the guy that had drowned started coughing up water! Shortly after that we rolled up on the tracks, put him in our work truck and while coordinating with local emergency services by way of the UP dsipatcher we brought him to the railroad depot in Kremmling, CO where an ambulance was waiting. We talked to the guy on the way in and you could tell he wasn't in a good way... we asked simple questions and it would take him a couple minutes to answer, speaking very slowly and trying so hard to stitch the words together. We asked if we could call someone for him and he couldn't remember his wife's number. Before we could really help, he was loaded into the ambulance and hauled away.
We never found out what happened with him, I can only hope that he had a full recovery and went on with his life, never to kayak solo again!
Crazy experience, glad we were in the right place at the right time to assist!
