A 38-year-old San Antonio woman died this afternoon when she was swept off a commercial raft in a Brown’s Canyon Class IV rapid in Chaffee County.
Her name was not released.
The Summit County Sheriff’s Department said she was one of four people who went into the water after their raft was hit by a big wave in the Arkansas River at about 1:45 p.m.
The other rafters were quickly picked up by one of the seven other rafts on the trip. The woman was swept into some branches near Seidel’s Sinkhole. Though she was quickly retrieved, the woman had no pulse, authorities said in a media release.
A Class IV rapid is defined as one that has “strong rapids, large waves, big holes, unpredictable currents, and dangerous paddling.”
High country rivers are running fast because of the fast snowmelt. The river was running at 3,340 cubic feet per second at the time, almost twice the 30-year median for the waterway.
