Texas Man Rescued After Trying Most Dangerous Rapid In River On "Walmart Raft"

Luckily for a young man from West Texas, an expert kayaker from Cody and his friends were in the right place at the right time after the man’s raft flipped on one the Shoshone River’s worst section of rapids called the “Iron Curtain.”

“They ran the biggest rapid on the river during the highest water in a Walmart raft,” Kevin Kennedy told Cowboy State Daily on Monday.

Or rather, the young Texan and two friends attempted that foolhardy feat Sunday afternoon but their raft flipped, throwing them into the raging waters.

Luckily, they all made it out of the roiling rapids alive. The first two made it to shore almost immediately, but the third out-of-state rafter ended up stranded in a cave along the river.

“When I got to him, he was basically standing there in his underwear and shivering. He was about a 19-year-old saddle bronc rider from West Texas,” Kennedy said.

Didn’t Realize The Danger

The three men had just bought the raft that day and decided to take it for a run on the Shoshone River below Buffalo Bill Dam west of Cody, Park County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Monte McClain told Cowboy State Daily.

Information regarding the men’s names and hometowns wasn’t available Monday, he said. But apparently, they were inexperienced at running whitewater and had no idea what they were getting into.

Massive amounts of water, still cold from spring snowmelt runoff, is being released from the dam, McClain said. The Shoshone River, flowing toward Cody through a narrow canyon, is hairy enough as it is during low flows.

But during peak runoff, even the most experienced river-runners approach it with extreme caution with the river flowing at about 4,500 cubic feet per second (cfs), McClain said.

Kennedy, an experienced river navigator, agreed that that the Iron Curtain is nothing to mess with, and he’s amazed that the three men in the raft survived.

“I’ll run the Iron Curtain up to a certain level, up to about 2,500 cfs. And right now, it’s way above that level,” Kennedy said.

Good Timing

Kennedy said he’d spent some time that weekend kayaking with three friends from the Bozeman, Montana, area: Travis Lehman, James Larson and Dante Biancucci.

On Sunday, they ran the upper section of the Shoshone River below the dam, and the runoff from the dam made for some top-notch kayaking, he said.

But they knew better than to even try the Iron Curtain on such a day and were portaging their kayaks around that rapid when they noticed “a lot of sheriff’s and search and rescue vehicles” along the river, he said.

An emergency call came into the dispatch center at 3:33 p.m., a report that a raft had flipped in the river downstream of the Hayden Arch Bridge, according to the sheriff’s department.

Two of the three people in the raft made it to the south shore of the river almost immediately after the raft flipped and called for help.

But the third person was missing. He was later located downstream, stranded in a small cave along a relatively tame eddy in the river.

Kennedy said that one of the search and rescue team members, Scott Stingley, is a fellow kayaker. When Stingley recognized Kennedy, he asked if Kennedy and his friends could help, and they gladly accepted.

Warm Clothes And Conversation

Kennedy crossed the water in his kayak to the stranded man, and rescuers were able to toss him some emergency supplies, including warm fleece clothing.

“He’d had a Walmart life vest on, but apparently he lost that after they were dumped in the river,” Kennedy said. “So, search and rescue was able to pass us the warm fleece, a new life vest, a harness and a helmet.”

As the young man started to warm up, Kennedy said he chatted with him while Stingley worked on rigging some rope.

“After a while, Scott was able to rappel down there with us, get some ropes hooked onto the harness and pull him out of there,” Kennedy said.

The man was treated for symptoms of hypothermia, McClain said.

“That water is extremely frigid right now,” he said. “And add to that the effects of windchill. The whole time he was stranded, he was getting blasted by the wind coming down that canyon.”

Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.