SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — The body of a 50-year-old man from Sandy, Utah, has been recovered after a rafting mishap on the Green River in Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado, according to the U.S. National Park Service.
The man has not been publicly identified pending notification of family, but NPS officials say he was recovered at around 7:45 a.m. this morning after being reported missing Thursday afternoon, June 27, at around 4 p.m.
Park staff were initially notified that a raft was pinned on a rock in the rapid named Hells Half-Mile.
“The group was eventually able to unpin and secure the boat, but the person, now dislodged, unresponsive, and having lost his lifejacket, drifted downriver,” stated the press release from NPS. Officials traveled through the Canyon of Lodore by raft while other officials traveled by car along Echo Park Road.
Commercial rafting company Adrift notified park officials they found the body this morning, around 10 miles downstream from the original rescue site. The body was airlifted to the Moffat County Coroner’s Office.
Dinosaur National Monument consists of over 210,000 acres in both Colorado and Utah. While the monument is best known for the dinosaur quarry and the fossils preserved there, the monument also contains spectacular canyons along the Green and Yampa rivers. These rivers are famous among whitewater rafters who travel here from across the globe to raft them
