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Brian Rueff was a good friend and a great paddler. There is no possible way to do such an amazing person justice. However words must be said about his impact on the paddling community, because whether or not you know it, we all experienced a great loss yesterday.
I know how rumours can get started when dealing with an issue like this, so I'll convey to you exactly what happened as I heard it, in the hope that we can somehow learn something from this accident. I was not on the Green yesterday, but three of my very good friends decided to put on somewhere arouond 300%. Before anyone starts judging, this is not a crazy, unreasonable thing to do. We've paddled the Green at this level before, and if a few rapids are walked, it's not any harder than 100%. Brian has paddled the Green hundreds of times, so it wasn't an issue of experience either, he's paddled Gorilla at 200% before, as well as the other big ones numerous times.
Apparently Brian was a bit off of his game yesterday, and had already decided on walking the big ones. The group reached Zwicks, and Brian had a slight mishap, flipping up top, but came out fine, he immediately charged into Chief's, and was seen sitting in the eddy below on river right safely. The other member of the group waited for the two remaining boaters to offer any safety needed below Zwick's. When the remaining boaters arrived safely, they ran Chief's and eddied out. Brian was nowhere to be seen, so they assumed he had begun hiking. When they reached the bottom of the portage, Brian was still missing. One member ran back up to see if Brian had for some reason decided to get redemption on Zwick's, while the others ran downstream, and found his boat floating below Rapid Transit. They spread out and searched the entire stretch of river from Chief down, and searched as best they could into Nutcracker until dark, when they hiked out to get help. They hiked back in with the search and rescue squad and searched until 11, and then again today with no water. His body was found in the river left sneak of Nutcracker.
I've only known Brian for about a year, but in the last couple of months he has become one of my favourite people to paddle with. We've shared many adventures while paddling all over the southeast, as well as Canada this summer. He is one of the most generous people I've ever met, always offering to drive to rivers when I'm being a cheap punk about taking my car, and always, always willing to go paddle the Green with me, no matter what the level, when noone else wants to go.
One of our most memorable trips occurred on my 19th birthday this past October. It was an absolutely amazing day, and in spite of the Green message not being updated, I convinced him to paddle anyways. We arrived at the put-in to an empty river. I struck out bigtime! Instead of getting pissed off at me for the bad call, Brian just kept talking excitedly about how cool it was going to be to see all of the rocks that make up the rapids in there. We paddled the natural flow from Big Hungry, which was probably about 20% and only walked three rapids! Brian never once complained. We took huge hits boofing over empty drops, but all that he could talk about was how beautiful the gorge is, and how incredible the rocks are that create our home run. Brian was a person who loved experiences, whether it was boofing big drops or surfing giant green waves, his love for the outdoors was contagious, and I'm honoured to have known him.
It still hasn't really hit me that I won't be seeing Brian at UNCA the next time I head over there to hang out with the boys. I just don't understand how a river that we all love so much; one which has brought so much joy and self-confidence to my own life, could take one of my best friends. This river is our home, Asheville locals have run it hundreds of times, and the familiarity of this river often dampers the respect that it is given. I hope that this incident will remind us that no matter how many times we paddle there, we all make mistakes. What kills me is that Brian wasn't even trying to run the rapid, I think he missed the portage eddy above Gorilla, which is very small, and flushed in backwards inadvertantly. It's always easy to judge what should have been done in an accident after the fact. These guys did not run an unsafe trip, they know the hazards that exist on such a steep river with so much water. The one thing that we can learn from this horrible accident is that group communication and avoiding seperation is crucial.
Brian, I wish I could have been there to help you somehow yesterday. We will all miss you dearly on the river, around campus, and at the apartment. Thank you for being a part of my life.
Love,
Chris Gragtmans
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