RADIUM — Search and res-cue teams from Grand and Summit counties continued looking Sunday for a Denver-area man who fell off a raft on the upper Colorado River.
The 41-year-old man was with a friend Saturday afternoon near Radium, west of Kremmling in Grand County, when he fell into the rapids.
Dave Batura of the Grand County Search and Rescue team said a two-day search had “no success so far.”
After that long a time, Grand County Sheriff Rod Johnson said, the rescue operation turned into a recovery operation with hopes of finding the man’s body.
“We figure we are in recovery mode right now. We just need to find the person and put a conclusion to it,” he said.
Teams have been heading out on rafts and on foot along the shoreline looking along a 2-mile section of the Colorado. But they are facing several challenges. The river is flowing more than double of what it normally would be this time of year, and high winds were making it difficult to control boats.
“It’s going to hurt visibility plus the fact it makes it harder on the boat crews to maneuver the boats and effectively search,” Batura said.
Plus, despite signs warning boaters to wear life jackets, authorities say the man wasn’t wearing one when he fell into Class 3 rapids and could still be under deep water.
“There were two people on the boat, and they were fairly equipped, but the person who fell in the water didn’t have on a life jacket,” said Johnson.
Family members say the man had rafted this river several times, but authorities such as Batura say life jackets are still vital when anyone heads out on the water.
“No matter how comfortable you are or the fact you don’t think you will go in the water, a (life jacket) is necessary almost all the time,” Batura said.
If search teams didn’t find the missing man by nightfall Sunday, they were expected to continue looking again today along a different part of the river.
