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A Gaston County kayaker who was pulled from the frigid and swollen South Fork River Saturday and later died was identified Sunday as Eric Bohanan, 48, of Stanley.
He and his friend Stephen Wright, 43, decided to kayak the river Saturday afternoon, as snowmelt and rains swelled its waters.
“(Wright) told me he looked at the water and knew it was a bad idea,” said Eric Norwood, an investigator with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission who is looking into the accident.
Norwood said the men were determined to take on the river, which is a popular paddling route. The water rushing by was only in the 30s; the men weren’t wearing dry suits.
Gorged with melting snow and anywhere from 2-10 inches of rain that poured over parts of western N.C. the day before, the South Fork was a raging torrent compared to its normal level.
“What normally would be a two-and-a-half hour ride probably would have only taken 20 minutes,” Norwood said.
The mens’ kayaks soon flipped. They were able to escape the capsized boats, but were then pinned on opposite banks, Norwood said.
Wright told investigators he managed to pull himself up onto the bank after a log smashed into his back and temporarily dislodged him from where he was stuck.
Bohanan grabbed a tree branch, but it broke and he fell back into the river.
“(Wright) kept yelling at him, ‘Pull yourself up!’ and (Bohanan) kept yelling back, ‘I can’t,’” Norwood said. Bohanan soon succumbed to the cold, rushing water and lost consciousness.
Wright managed to pull his cell-phone from a waterproof bag and call his wife. Almost 40 rescuers soon arrived and found Bohanan tangled in a tree. Paramedics rushed him to Gaston Memorial Hospital, where he died.
