One person is dead and two others were treated for medical issues after a group of rafting guides operating in the Chilkat Valley took a weekend trip down two rivers in Canada.
A Montana resident, Marin Pitt, died while on a guides-only rafting trip down the Blanchard and Tatshenshini rivers on June 22, according to a prepared statement from Alaska Mountain Guides & Climbing School, Inc. director of operations Sabrina Harvey.
An ambulance from Haines met the group at the border on Sunday and transported two injured people into town, according to emergency responders familiar with the situation. It’s not clear if Canadian authorities have yet released Pitt’s body. Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Haines Junction did not share any information about the incident and the agency’s response or investigation as of press time.
Harvey described the trip as “non-commercial,” and organized by guides on their personal time.
Current and former employees of Alaska Mountain Guides described the trip as an annual one that has happened for years, sometimes multiple times a year.
Former Alaska Mountain Guides employee Zack Hawks said he’s done that specific trip a few times.
“Usually every year, we get a dozen or so guides to go down the river at least once or twice,” he said. “It’s a pretty fun trip to blow off some steam and give the guides some experience with whitewater.”
On the Tatshenshini River, water levels were flowing above 5,000 cubic feet per second on Sunday, according to data from the National Hydrological Service of Canada.
Hawks described the cubic foot per second measurement as the equivalent of a basketball and a half of water flowing past a person.
“So 5,000 basketballs passing you every second is how much water is passing you there,” he said. “It’s a lot of water for that space.”
But even in that high-water environment, Hawks said there are companies like Tatshenshini Expediting running commercial tours and taking inexperienced clients down the river.
It’s not clear what specific safety protocols or plan were in place on this trip, though Harvey at Alaska Mountain Guides said they were followed. “The group was experienced and prepared, and the trip was conducted with care. All safety protocols were followed,” she wrote in an email. She did not address the company’s role in providing gear or equipment for the trip or what specific safety protocols were.
“Out of respect for Marin and her loved ones, no further details will be released at this time,” Harvey wrote. Company president Sean Gaffney answered the phone on Monday but said it wasn’t a good time to talk.
Hawks said when he’s done the trip, the safety plans are trip dependent.
“It’s kind of up to each guide who is organizing the trip to have their safety plan. Historically, when I’ve done it, we’ve always had a plan ‘if this happens, do this, if this happens – this is what we’ll do.’ We have a safety talk if there’s people who don’t have rafting experience.”
Hawks said he would assume the company and guides are doing a full debrief on what happened.
“It’s good for all of the river runners, rafters, to know about the incident and be aware of what happened and how it happened,” he said. “Knowing about it and talking about it are the only way to prevent it from happening again.”
Russ Lyman, a longtime rafting guide who co-authored a guide on the Tatshenshini River, trains river guides at Alaska Mountain Guides and has done the trip for the last five years. Lyman said he was contacted several days ago and invited along for the trip, but he didn’t end up going this year.
The whole trip takes about three hours on the river, Lyman said. Rafters put in on the Blanchard River, a tributary of the Tatshenshini, near a maintenance station at the Yukon Border. They take out at Dalton Post.
Based on conversations he’d had with the guides and staff since the incident, Lyman said he’s been told that everyone was wearing dry suits or wet suits and helmets and taking safety seriously.
He said about 25 people went on the trip and they had four boats which he was told were a mix of Alaska Mountain Guides boats and personal ones.
Lyman said the trip is meant to be a fun way to introduce guides to whitewater and a type of rafting they don’t often get near the Chilkat Valley.
“It’s a whitewater section that we often run for fun, guides do, this time of year when it’s running high because it’s more exciting,” he said. “But, of course, it’s more dangerous at high water.”
One reason for that, Lyman said, is that at high water there are not many places to stop once you launch.
“So a lot of whitewater rivers are what’s called a pool and drop,” he said. “You go down, you have a rapid that you drop, then you have a pool,” he said. “The Blanchard and the Tatshenshini is more just a constant current and especially at high water. It just keeps going like one long, constant rapid.”
That means if a raft flips, which is not unusual, whoever is in it can end up in the water for a long time.
“It’s just fast and furious and relentless,” he said.
Lyman and others said the guide who died had whitewater experience, but this was her first time on the Tatshenshini River.
He said the mood among guides is very somber. The 33-year-old guide was in her first year of guiding with AMG in Haines, but she had more experience and was older than a lot of the guides, who are in their twenties.
“[Pitt] was well loved and really respected,” he said.