Ryan Balzer is the luckiest man in Colorado.
The 27-year-old Fort Collins kayaker didn’t have a pulse and wasn’t breathing when fellow paddlers freed his pinned kayak from a rock and pulled him from the Cache la Poudre River two weeks ago. He had been underwater for several minutes.
In a blessed ripple of adept action, those paddlers breathed into Balzer’s lungs, pumped his chest, called for help, evacuated him from the river and raced him down Poudre Canyon to a waiting helicopter.
The 10-year kayaker already is back home, planning to fire up his landscaping business and make a full recovery.
“He should never have made it. But what those guys did …” said Balzer’s mother, Barbara, ending her thought with a telling sigh.
Balzer was nearly counted as one of several drowning deaths in Colorado’s swollen waterways this spring. But his status as an ugly statistic was thwarted that Saturday by a band of quick-thinking kayakers who rallied to rescue – not even knowing one another.
“It was amazing how everybody did exactly what they needed to do,” said Matt Hopkins, a 27-year- old Denver paddler who ranks as possibly the biggest hero in the eddy of heroes who helped save Balzer.
Balzer had stopped fighting when Hopkins shucked his kayak, leaped into the water and swam to the rock that was holding the paddler underwater. Another kayaker threw a rope from shore, which Hopkins used to pendulum into the underwater boat. He yanked the boat off the rock. He then popped Balzer’s skirt and freed his unmoving body from the boat. On shore, three more paddlers stabilized Balzer and began CPR.
Downstream, four passing paddlers flagged down a car to call for help down the road. Two more drivers stopped. One had a ladder that worked as a stretcher. The other had tools to access the padlocked foot bridge swinging over the current. It took a few minutes to get him breathing and racing down the canyon.
“It was what we had to do to keep the guy alive,” said Fort Collins expert paddler Todd Gillman, who was downstream of Balzer when he was pinned. “Ryan is alive because people had training. It is a team sport. In a rescue situation, it becomes your job, your mission.”
Despite seeing playgrounds when they ogle the swollen rivers that have taken at least five lives in recent weeks, kayakers have not lost one of their own so far this paddling season. Many in the state’s growing community of river lovers say adequate training, proper equipment and a healthy respect for whitewater are essential to enjoy any swift current and hopefully survive inevitable accidents.
Chris Brobin was sure he was watching two teenage girls drown last week on the Arkansas River in Pueblo. Without helmets, floatation devices or warm gear, the girls, along with a grown man, paddled a flimsy raft into a dangerous hole in the just-opened Pueblo whitewater playpark.
“They obviously had no awareness of whitewater, and two boaters had already told them to get off the river because it was very dangerous. We tried to motion them to get out,” said Brobin, with the Pikes Peak Whitewater Club.
The raft flipped and the girls spent five minutes recirculating in the foaming, river-wide hole, before the hole released them.
“We were helpless, because nobody was going to get in that hole,” Brobin said. “Someone said ‘Why don’t you do something?’ We tried to throw them ropes. There wasn’t anything we could do. I’ll never forget that feeling.”
Brobin and the paddlers involved in Balzer’s rescue are well- trained with years of river experience, well-prepared with proper gear such as throw ropes and ready to help.
“A lot of people … maybe they just want to get wet or cool off and maybe they don’t see or don’t know the risks,” said Gillman, an adventure kayaker who paddles the most difficult whitewater in the country. “We love high water, but we know the inherent risks.”
Jason Blevins can be reached at 303-820-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com.
