When he attempted to stand up, the current, enveloping his back like a heavy white concrete blanket, forced him beneath the surface again.
When Sanders could hold his breath no longer, he made one more attempt to grab some air. A burst of ice-cold, frothy water immediately flooded his lungs and his larynx, rebelling against this assault, shut down.
The young guide didn’t panic, but when his lungs gave out, he began gasping for air. Placing his hands on the slimy green rock in front of him, he attempted, one final time, to extract his legs from their prison. As his oxygen-starved brain began to shut down, a thin film of darkness spread across his eyes and he began to lose consciousness. Deprived of oxygen, Sanders suffered a seizure. His skin began to turn pale, his body went limp, and within seconds his eyes became fixed and dilated.
Because Carlyle understood what would happen if the crew didn’t get to Sanders immediately, he leapt into rescue mode. Grabbing his own guide paddle, he steered the raft into an eddy as the other boats pulled in around him.
Carlyle told Hernandez, “Quick. Get a rope across to the other side and ten yards above him. Betts, go upstream and stop any other boats from coming through here. And tell Nash to run back and contact an EMT crew.”
Using hand signals and whistles to coordinate their movements, Hernandez and Keith Nash attempted to lower a dragline to Sanders. They managed to loop the rope between his waist and the boulder six or seven times in four minutes, but they couldn’t pull him off the rock. It was like trying to rope a butterfly.
While the crew worked to free the trapped guide, a woman from Marshall’s boat rushed toward Carlyle. “How can you just stand there?” she screamed.
“Step back please,” Carlyle said without turning to face her.
“Why are you just watching this?”
“Marshall, get her away from me.”
“Why don’t you go out there?” she said.
“If I do that, I’ll lose control of this rescue.”
“For Christ’s sake, do something.”
“We’re doing everything we can. Now move away and let us save him.”
Unable to free Sanders’s legs, Hernandez found a kayaker who managed to attach a line to a small D-ring on the back of Sanders’s life vest. Three minutes later they all dragged him from the rock, hauled him to shore, and began CPR and chest compressions.
Lugging their equipment and a stretcher along a muddy path parallel to the Indian, it took an EMT crew half an hour to reach Sanders, begin life support, and carry him back to a chopper waiting near the put-in. Before it lifted off, a paramedic walked up to Carlyle and the other guides. “We’ll do what we can. But his vitals don’t look that good.”
After Marshall rushed off to the Glens Falls Hospital, Carlyle told their clients, “I’ve seen people survive something like this. The cold water may have protected him.” Then he herded them toward the put-in and onto a bus that would take them back to their cars.
Unable to talk about the accident they’d just witnessed, the guides loaded the boats and gear onto a trailer, drove to the South Mountain Lodge, and shut themselves inside the crew room.
Marshall got back at six that evening. “They worked on him for an hour. He was intubated and warmed up. They had lines running in everywhere, but it was no use.”
“But an EMT told me he had a pulse,” Hernandez said.
“His heart was convulsing, not contracting,” Marshall said. “The trauma docs pulled a pint of water from his lungs. The death certificate read ‘flush drowning.’” He walked over to his desk and sat down.
“He’s dead?” Betts said.
“A nurse said it was a long shot,” Marshall said. “He was just submerged too long.”
Carlyle said, “Has someone notified his parents?”
“Both dead. They were electrocuted in ‘95 when a storm dropped power lines on their camper.”
“He have any other family?” Nash asked.
Marshall closed his eyes for a long moment. “A wife and two young girls.”
After everyone else had cleared out, Marshall turned to Carlyle. “Let’s go outside. I need to talk to you.”
They left the lodge and walked out onto the bridge spanning the Hudson. Chunks of ice, some the size of small cabins, had turned the river into a chaotic maze. Four-foot waves crashed against rocks scattered across the streambed, and the current pouring downstream obliterated everything in its path. The bridge, a concrete and steel structure supported by four thick pillars, resembled an aircraft carrier wallowing in the ocean.
“How the hell could he fall out of his boat on the Indian?” Marshall said.
“Everything was going fine,” Carlyle said. “We slid across the wave coming off Mixmaster, just like we were supposed to. Then the raft slammed into a rock. When I turned around, he was gone.”
“Have you ever seen anything like that?”
“No one comes out of a boat that quickly.” Carlyle stared down at the Hudson. “He ever make a mistake like that before?”
“Never. He figured out Guide’s Hole the first time he saw it. By the end of last season, he was driving boats down the Indian.”
“Where are the rafts now?”
“Hernandez said he would take them off the trailer before he left for the night.”
“Let’s go take a look.”
Carlyle and Marshall left the bridge and walked over to a small shed, where Hernandez was stowing equipment.
“You mind showing us Sanders’s boat?” Carlyle said.
“What the hell for?” Hernandez said.
“Just do us a favor.”
Hernandez reached into the trailer, peeled back two rafts, and found the one Sanders had used.
Carlyle reached for the foot strap, but Hernandez beat him to it and pulled it up. Only one end was attached to the raft. “The piece of shit came apart. We ought to sue the damn company.”
“I knew the kid hadn’t made a mistake,”
