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Hello everybody.
My name is Cody Howard, I saw the message below and thought that I own everybody an fuller, 1st hand account to what happened on Mill Creek, MT. Ryan and i have been paddling together for about a year and we decided to do a little afternoon run of Mill creek, a steep one, just outside of Missoula, MT. This creek is basicly on continous 2 mile rapid, full of little drops, slides, and a tricky/gnar 10fter. Nothing to hard though, class 4 water, but with definate tricky class 5 moves.
We were in playboats and scouted everything throughly, I was in a Disco, and he was in a Trickster. Everything went as planned. We caught all of the micro eddys to portage the 5 log jams, and had a blast in the waterfalls section.
Ryan then broke the paddle that i had lent him and mentioned that he was getting very tired. I switched paddles and I took the broken paddle and told him that we should call it a day, and catch the next eddy on the right-hand side of the creek, next to the road. He agreed and then paddled off and flipped, i was behind him, and witnessed what happened next.
Like i said, he flipped in this EXTREMELY low-volume creek, and lost his paddle. He tried to hand roll, about 10 times everytime he was unsuccessful. I don't know how much air he got when trying to roll either. This went on for about 1/4 of a mile. The whole time i'm beside him, nogotiating the creek, and trying to proform a T-Save. Ryan never tried to T-Save, and then got pinned horozontally against a rock about a 8ft. fall. I proceded to try to knock him loose from the pin by running my boat into his. This didn't do much but did dislodge him from the broad-side pin. I got washed over the drop and waited for about 5 seconds, and he didn't come over. I then got out of my boat and scaled up the steep sides, and bushwacked my way back up, loosing one of my booties. I got back up to him and found him upside down, with his bow in the air, vertically pinned against a little drop. Without hesisitation, i jumped into the creek and dislodged him from the pin. He came out from underneath of the boat, the skirt was popped, and the current took his lifeless body over the drops below. I threw the boat to shore and chased his body downstream. The body of Ryan Palmer was then washed up agaisnt another rock middle of the creek. I scaled down to him and, when i reached him he was still fully geared, lifejacket, helmet, everything! I dragged him to shore and attempted to give him CPR. I was unable to clear an airway, because his jaw was clamped down on his tounge. There was no pulse and no signs of life. So i ran the road to the car and called the nearest athorities.
To the of my best knowledge the elasped time of when he flipped to when he got pinned was 2 mins. The amount of elapsed time of when i got back up to him and he was vertically pinned was 1:30 minutes. The duration of the accident was 3:30 to 4:00 minutes. I believe/know that by the time i dislodged his boat he had passed away. The accident was horrific and shouldn't have happened but this is the nature of the beast. Ryan Palmer, a freshman at University of Montana, died having a blast, doing what he wanted to do. We should all be so lucky....
Ryan Micheal Palmer
11/2/1982 - 4/29/2002
-Cody Howard
Ryan, buddy, i love you and wish i could have done more. |
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---Kayaking Death in Missoula--- New 
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