Sometimes you drift along, glancing up at the cliffs more than the river, not noticing the slight bulge of water ahead. And then the jolt comes.
“I'm afraid I have some bad news,” said Dave Edwards. “It's about Dugald—he's dead. He's been killed on a river in California.”
On June 3, 1997, Dugald Bremner and three companions found themselves on the Silver Fork of the American, running through a gorge of carved granite. By early afternoon they reached the most difficult rapid and stopped to scout it.
High flows poured over a ledge, obscuring a sieve of faults and cavities siphoning much of the river through the bedrock. Below the top falls, a fallen tree added an extra hazard to the Class 5 whitewater. Only a handful of kayakers had run the upper river before and, as far as they knew, all had portaged this rapid. Dugald studied it, reading the water for a way through the obstacles below. And he found it.
Snugged into his blue kayak, Dugald entered the current and lined up on what from above had appeared to be only minor turbulence, a swirlie, at the head of the falls. But in fact it marked a submerged fissure cutting deeply into the bedrock with water folding in from both sides and a heavy flow funneling through it. As he followed the line, his boat nosed into shallow rock and stalled, losing enough momentum for the tail to snag in the crevice.
Quickly the powerful current wedged the kayak in the narrowing sluice and dragged the tail deeper. “I need help,” he calmly told Eric Brown, standing on the shore nearby. The other kayakers were downriver scouting, ready to assist if needed when the paddler reached the lower pour-offs. Eric waded across the fast water, expecting only to give the kayak a nudge. But the situation rapidly turned serious. A strong current ran beneath the surface, drawing the stern downward and jamming it tighter into the crevice. Taking quick action, Eric straddled the crack and used his body to deflect the water from Dugald. With one hand he grabbed a shoulder strap of his life jacket and the boat with the other. Using all his strength, he lifted. “I'd pull back and create a pocket,” Eric said, “and then lose it—back and forth, the fight was on like a tug-of-war. But the river just wouldn't quit.”
Ralph Michlisch worked his way across to assist, but slipped just as he was reaching the kayak. The river drew him under, pulling him into the crevice and out through an opening in the rock. It carried him down the falls, sweeping him beneath the log and into an eddy below. Bill Morse waited to make sure he was safe, and the two of them climbed back to the top of the rapid.
As Dugald sank lower, the full force of the current pinned him forward against the boat, trapping his legs inside. The river kept pulling deeper and deeper as the bow pivoted higher. He reached a hand out of the water and Eric grabbed it. Dragged under, Dugald fought as long as he could. And then his hand relaxed.
“He just went unconscious,” Eric shouted to the others, less than five minutes after Dugald became trapped. Splitting up, Ralph went for help and Bill stayed. Side-by-side, the remaining two struggled to extract the boat, desperate to free their friend as the river kept surging, throwing them around. But nothing worked.
Seeing no other option, Bill jumped onto the stern of the kayak, bracing himself on the rock and letting his back take the brunt of the current. He yanked on Dugald's life jacket but it tore apart. Again reaching deep, he grabbed Dugald's helmet and pulled. The chinstrap broke and the helmet flew off. He lost his grip, and with the river slamming against him, disappeared. Another crack, perpendicular to the main crevice and leading straight into the bedrock below the surface, sucked him under.
“I'm looking downstream,” said Eric. “Nothing.” Dugald was gone, Ralph had left, and Bill had just vanished.
Feeling suddenly alone, Eric noticed an arm thrashing around underwater. Pounded by the cascading water, Bill had braced himself on a chockstone to keep from being dragged even lower and found an air pocket beneath a projecting rock. Water was hitting him from every direction. Unable to surface, a voice kept telling him to let go and end the terror, but another, the one he listened to, told him to keep going. “The river didn't care,” he said. “It wasn't the enemy; it just didn't care. It just kept on flowing.”
Despite the terrific force of the current, Bill managed to work a hand upward. Eric sat down and braced a leg on the far side of the submerged shaft, risking the danger of being pulled in. He lowered the other leg to his friend and felt him grab on. As water continued flooding down, Bill hauled himself up hand over hand, using his last ounce of strength. As he struggled to surface, his face broke into daylight and he gasped the clear air. With the first breath came a great urge to rest for a moment, only a moment, but he heard his friend shouting at him not to give up. Eric knew if Bill relaxed for a split second the river would have him again.
“He was just taking it right in the face,” Eric said. “He came up choking and gagging.” With his back to the current, Eric's own dry suit top was ballooning with water, spraying out around the neck. He gripped Bill's life jacket and pulled him free. “There's nothing more we can do,” he said, both exhausted. “We have to go for help.”
A video clip taken earlier that day showed Dugald running a waterfall. He moved gracefully, letting the current take the kayak, matching the river's flow perfectly. Following a clean line, he plunged down the drop into the churning water below. As the camera panned in, he looked back at the falls and gave a shout, his voice drowned in the roar of the water.
“He was ferociously brave,” said Dave Edwards, friend and fellow photographer, “but not rash. It's not so daring when you have the skills, and he really had the skills.”
Word of the accident reached Dugald's close friends, and soon his partner Kate Thompson, Sue Bennett, Chris McIntosh, and Kelly Burke left for the Silver Fork. Arriving at the scene, they found a spectacular setting—stormclouds breaking up, a double rainbow arcing down to the river, a roostertail fanning above the nose of the blue kayak.
A local swift-water rescue team had postponed their efforts to remove the body after an unsuccessful attempt, calling it the most difficult extraction they had faced. But friends and family, concerned by the delay, felt they should take matters into their own hands. “It became clear to me,” said Kate Thompson, “that Eldorado County should not be responsible for this rescue. We assume our own risks,” she added, referring to the climbing and boating community, “and we take care of our own.”
On June 8, an expert team gathered at the site under the direction of rigger Mike Weis, with Lars Holbeck and Eric Magnuson handling the in-river work. Within a few hours they had completed the recovery.
His friends brought the kayak home to Flagstaff and leaned it against the wall of his studio, bow skyward. As the sense of loss deepened, memories surfaced, the little things once overlooked. Blake Spaulding described how Dugald used to move his head a certain way and glance off, a mannerism she picked up while working for him. “See, I just did it again,” she said. “We're composites of each other, all of us.” Jeri Ledbetter recalled standing next to Dugald, scouting a rapid on the Colorado. “It's only water,” he said to reassure her. And later, when she nearly drowned on the Bio-Bio, his words came back to her. “It's only water.”
The photographer's portfolio lay spread out on the light table: A climber stretched out in a hammock strung high among the golden aspen; a blue kayak, almost aerial, floated between boulders and whitewater; Granite Falls caught the last light of day reflected from the rim. The images revealed a sense of beauty in action—not a life viewed from a distance but one fully engaged. On the wall of Dugald's studio hung a single photo of his own, one of his favorite shots. It showed boatman Mike Yard diving off the cliff at Three Springs, suspended for an instant in pure emptiness.
“He was following his own path and he succeeded at it,” Dave said. “A true Scot.” Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the 41-year old photographer guided river trips on the Colorado for 20 years. He attended Prescott College and graduated magna cum laude from Northern Arizona University with a degree in psychology/biology. Photography took him around the world on assignments ranging from Siberian rivers to Turkestan peaks. His first article for National Geographic, documenting the first descent of a Kazakstan river, will appear in the November, 1997 issue.
News of the accident spread fast. Hundreds of friends converged on Bobby Jensen's place below the San Francisco Peaks for a memorial gathering. The drone of bagpipes could be heard coming from an aspen grove, carrying far like the deeper tones of a rapid. Old friends and family members stood before his dory, the Skagit, and said a few words of goodbye.
Dugald's mother, Jean Bremner, recounted an early move the family made from Missouri to Texas. The farther west they drove, the more apprehensive she became. She almost cried when they reached the outskirts of Dallas at sunset, finding it flat, dry, and barren. Then five-year old Dugald leaned over the seat. “See, Mom,” he said, “didn't I tell you it would be beautiful?”
“I hope when it's my time,” she added, “Dugald will be there leaning over my shoulder saying, ‘Didn't I tell you it would be beautiful?”
Bill Morse spoke, savoring each breath of mountain air. He apologized for not having saved his friend. “Live until you die,” he reminded everyone, and soon a huge bonfire flared into the night sky.
On a Tibetan prayer flag nearby, someone had left a simple message:
“Dugald,
We'll talk downriver.”
Downriver, where the light in the evening pulls back from all but the highest rim and the rock gives off heat like something alive.

Scott Thybony