'Tom and the river': A brother survives where wild river claimed the other (2024)

The fifth night was the coldest, and Thomas Gray worried he might freeze to death if he stopped moving.

The 73-year-old boater from North Fork, Idaho, was huddled inside a pitch-black trailer at 6,400 feet elevation just outside the remote Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness northwest of Stanley on May 21. He was near an empty campground and silent airstrip; the only road there was snowed in. Even if the road was open, the highway was still miles away to the south and over a mountain pass.

His raft, from which he was ejected days earlier on Dagger Falls, was somewhere down the Middle Fork Salmon River, miles away to the north, damaged and hung up on an inaccessible riverbank flanked by sheer cliffs. All his belongings were there, too — not just phone and wallet, but camping equipment, food and water.

Crucially, the drybox on his raft also held matches. But that didn't help him now, as he paced around the trailer's inky darkness next to a cold stove and ready firewood.

The deeply experienced and capable boater was supposed to be at the Gray family reunion back in Illinois after what he'd intended to be a three-day trip from Marsh Creek, a Middle Fork tributary near Stanley, to the confluence of the Middle Fork and main Salmon, near where he lives.

Instead he was trying not to die in the backcountry. No one knew where he was or what happened to him — not his wife and daughter waiting and worrying at home; not the pilots, kayakers, cops and rangers who were searching for him; and certainly not the Gray family more than 1,000 miles east in Illinois.

All they knew was that he wasn't with the damaged boat searchers found.

"I know Tom: we’ve gone through different scenarios before, but nothing this serious," his wife, Lori, recounted. "I’m starting to think this doesn’t look too good. It wasn’t hitting us because we’ve gone through this year after year after year, wondering, if he doesn’t come out on time, how far is this going to go?"

John Haugh, a marine deputy with the Custer County Sheriff's Office, had a grimmer assessment.

"Several days into the search and rescue, we had impending severe weather, high winds and such, it was going to shut down the searching," he said. "It was not looking good after three or four days."

In Illinois, Gray said, "they’re getting all this, 'Oh, we thought maybe you died.'"

The family was especially worried because they'd been through almost the same ordeal before, two years prior, nearly to the day. They feared a repeat of the same grim outcome.

Small town boys

The Boundary Creek campground and boat launch on the upper Middle Fork sit at the north end of a long, winding dirt road cherry-stemmed into the southern flank of the massive wilderness area that envelopes the legendary National Wild and Scenic River — one of the first rivers designated as such in the country.

It's inaccessible to vehicles until about late May or early June, when outfitters who guide clients on the river during summer months punch through snow drifts at Cape Horn Summit, which the road traverses as it meanders north into the wilderness from State Highway 21. Once the road is open, the permitted float season soon begins, and only those who scored a lottery-awarded permit can hit the water.

Gray grew up in a small Mississippi River town about 30 miles northeast of the Quad Cities area. He was a "small town boy" who hadn't seen mountains until he was 16, when a friend's dad took them on a fishing trip to Estes Park, Colorado. Towering peaks emerged from fog as their Cadillac ate up high-plains highway toward the Rockies. Gray decided then that he would move to the mountains.

He made good on the promise to himself, passing up a nearly guaranteed job at home and moving to Moscow, Idaho, right after law school. He passed the state bar exam and began working in the district attorney's office in Gooding for $1,000 a month. His law career took him to Boise's DA office, mostly handling a crush of DUI charges that kept more than a dozen attorneys busy. He did the same in Coeur D'Alene. Then he was a public defender in Bend, Oregon, and eventually went on to lead the public defender office in Pendleton — a job he maintains today.

And all that time he was boating, first in kayaks and then in catarafts — larger but light boats with two long pontoons bridged by an aluminum-tube frame. He was a full-time river guide in the 1970s and guided part-time for years after. He also worked for years as a ski patroller.

In 46 years he floated the Middle Fork more than 50 times, running Dagger Falls thrice instead of portaging around it, and he completed more than a dozen early-season trips down Marsh Creek to access the Middle Fork.

For 14 years, Grayran the Middle Fork when the water was low before the height of spring runoff and permits weren't yet required. But that meant putting in at Marsh Creek because Boundary, located next to Dagger Falls, wasn't open yet.

'Lord, don't let this happen'

On May 24, 2022, Thomas was floating Marsh Creek to the Middle Fork with his younger brother, Robert.

Robert, a father of four who lived in the Seattle area, was 63 and had just retired from Boeing. He'd been Gray's rafting partner for years and was ready for longer floats and wanted to ease into bigger water.

Gray, then 71, had just retired from Pendleton and he and Lori moved to their dream cabin near North Fork, Idaho. (He returned to the job last summer to help pay medical bills associated with Lori's cancer treatments.)

The brothers planned a retirement trip: Robert would accompany his older sibling on the annual May float of Marsh Creek to the Middle Fork.

The run down Marsh Creek was uneventful. The brothers then camped at Boundary Creek after Gray ran both their unladen boats down Dagger Falls, one after the other, as Robert portaged the gear around.

The next morning, Thomas warned Robert of "a perpetual logjam" they'd encounter soon after pushing off into the water. They'd need to row hard to the left to clear it, and in doing so roll over a small rapid.

Thomas went first, clearing the squeeze without issue and tucking into a small eddy before another logjam and a 3-mile series of rapids and rocks. He turned around to see his brother hadn't gotten far enough left. The right pontoon of his boat caught a log, spun the boat around and sent it into the rapid backward. The boat flipped and ejected Robert.

"I went right to him and I backed up to him and I grabbed a hold of his life jacket," Gray recounted, "and he was totally unconscious but I could tell he was still breathing."

Gray couldn't pull his 275-pound brother into the boat, so he tried to tie him to the back, head above water, before the boat floated through the rapids.

"Just as I started to put the rope through there and I hadn’t cinched it yet, my boat hit the logjam. I didn’t have him yet and I watched him float the deadman’s float down the river," he said. "It took me about five minutes to get unstuck and I thought, 'Lord, don’t let this happen.'"

Gray searched the river 26 miles down to the Indian Creek Ranger Station, searching in vain for his brother. He alerted the ranger, and a helicopter search the following day spotted Robert's body stuck on a logjam 3 feet under the water. It was almost a month before rescuers recovered his body.

Gray reflected on the night before the accident, when the two camped at Boundary Creek.

"He was the best man in my wedding, my younger brother," Gray said. "He was just ready, he was unbelievable. He was ready to travel the world with his wife. I didn’t realize it was the last night of his life. He cooked a steak dinner. He always liked to cook steak."

The icebox

Five days short of the two-year anniversary of their last night together, Gray found himself back at Boundary Creek Campground. But this time he was cold and alone and without his boat. He was wearing his drysuit and had his helmet and life-preserver jacket, but personal flotation devices don't do much for thirst or hunger.

Unlike two years before, Gray was floating solo and Marsh Creek had been a nightmare. He planned to zip down the tributary in less than a day, on a Friday, en route to finishing the full float to the confluence by midday Sunday.

Instead, he blew the whole day, May 17, fighting through new logjams on the creek, at one point becoming pinned and needing the assistance of passing kayakers to free his boat. He didn't even make it to the Middle Fork, instead camping along the creek.

On Saturday, May 18, he zipped around the last logjam on Marsh Creek and hit the Middle Fork just above Dagger Falls and the Boundary Creek Campground. He was dozens of miles and a day behind schedule.He had planned to complete the arduous portage around Dagger because the water was higher than when he'd run it before. But he had no way to tell Lori, or the family reunion, he wouldn't be back on time.

"My wife’s going to be down there the next day with a truck waiting for me, I thought, 'Well, it is a little higher than I normally run it, but let’s do it,'" he recalled. "The next thing I knew I’m out of my boat. And when I went over I hit the side of the oar stand, hit me right above the knee and hit me in the shoulder. I didn’t think anything was wrong with the shoulder; I later learned it cut the tendon."

He got to shore just in time to see his boat float downriver and out of sight. He decided to stick around the campground for the night, knowing that searchers would scan the course of the river for him. But he had nowhere to sleep and a frigid mountain night loomed. A Forest Service pit toilet was the only shelter around.

"It’s like an icebox in there. After about an hour I became frozen, I just became frozen," he said. "That was the first of four nights I spent in outhouses. I just walked all night, because I was afraid if I laid down I would freeze up."

He stayed around the riverside campground all day Sunday. No one came by. And no one back home had any reason to think things were amiss.

Another sleepless, numbing night in the outhouse.

On Monday, May 20, he decided to embark on the 20-mile hike to Highway 21, a common route for travelers between Boise and the Stanley area. He never really regained his body temperature except during the height of day while walking, he said.

A few hours and miles into the hike, a soft thrumming noise punctuated the wild silence: A helicopter was coursing along the Middle Fork, looking for a 73-year-old boater reported overdue. But Gray had already set out for the highway and he wasn't near the river. He waved and jumped, but the helicopter wasn't looking for him there. The noise of its engine slowly disappeared.

"Had I stayed there six more hours, he probably would've spotted me," he realized. So he backtracked and returned to the Boundary Creek outhouse for a third sleepless and hungry night.

He waited for hours on the morning of Tuesday, May 21, for more searchers to come down the river, either by air or water. No such luck.

He hadn't eaten for days and his only source of water was creeks and snowbanks. He figured searchers weren't coming by again (he guessed correctly) and set out with conviction to reach the highway.

Almost 12 miles later he hit the Bruce Meadows airstrip and another nightfall alone. A local snowmobile club trailer was there, door unlocked.

"I walked in, there’s a wood stove and guess what, there’s a pile of wood," he said. "But guess what I didn’t have? Matches. Once again, just staying on my feet all night. I don’t know if I would’ve froze or not, but I was afraid if I went down I might freeze up. That was a long night."

Long indeed. A nearby weather station recorded a low of 19 degrees that night, and temps hit the low 20s each of the previous nights Gray spent in the outhouse.

"Those nights are long. You don’t want to take another step," he said. "That was about the coldest I've ever been in my entire life."

Six days later, over lunch in Lolo on Memorial Day, he said he couldn't really remember much about that night other than the cold and his want for matches. Even days later, he said, he still felt woozy from the experience, which remained somewhat hazy.

'Testimony to the human spirit'

A line of burly four-wheel-drive vehicles led by a lifted Jeep Wrangler crawled up the dirt road toward Cape Horn Summit the morning of Wednesday, May 22. The first two were from Far & Away Adventures, a Sun Valley-based outfitter in its 49th year of guiding, 44 of which have been on the Middle Fork. Co-owner Steve Lentz was at the wheel of the Jeep. Behind were two trucks from Salmon-based Wilderness River Outfitters.

The crews of outfitters and guides aimed to dig through the drifts blocking the pass and put boats in at Boundary Creek to assess the off-season's damage to the Middle Fork with things like landslides and logjams.

With guides digging and oversized, chained-up tires spinning through dense spring snowpack, the vehicles finally pushed through and began their descent toward Bruce Meadows.

"We rounded a corner or two and here’s Tom with a big smile on his face," Lentz said. "He was standing up with a big smile."

Lentz and Gray both stressed that, contrary to earlier news stories, Gray was not collapsed in a snowbank when the outfitters found him. He had hiked nearly to the top of the pass Wednesday morning and sat to rest on a snowbank, but the sound of revving engines alerted him that someone was coming, so he stood up and continued up the road.

And when the Jeep rounded the corner, Lentz said, they immediately knew who they'd found.

"Without a doubt, we knew his story, we knew his brother’s story," he said. "We were just so ecstatic to find a live person. We had launched early two years ago and we were looking for his brother. It was Nate that found him in a logjam."

Nate is Nate Ostis, renown kayaker, founder of Wilderness Rescue International and member of Valley County Search and Rescue, which dispatched him to look for Gray by floating the Middle Fork while aircraft searched above. Two years earlier, Ostis recovered Robert's body.

The guides, who have first-responder training, immediately began caring for Gray. Jake Miczulski, who is a Brundage Mountain Resort ski patroller in winter, was the most qualified and led care, Lentz said.

Meanwhile, before driving Gray down to Stanley, someone used a Garmin InReach satellite communication device to let authorities know Gray had been found alive and mostly healthy, although he was malnourished and dehydrated, and banged up from flipping his raft. Gray said he lost 17 pounds during the ordeal. They also messaged Lori.

In Challis, Haugh, the marine deputy, had been fearing the worst for Gray, and his concern was personal. He first met Gray during the search and recovery of Robert two years prior.

"It was pretty sad news, because when I was notified he was missing I was like, oh no, I know this man— I talked to him two years ago," he said. "It was a kick in the chest. Typically when you’re missing two or three days, it’s most likely not going to be a good outcome. It’s going to be a bad outcome."

By May 22 he was working up more search plans for when weather improved, but he worried the operation would simply be a body recovery.

"I was in a meeting with the sheriff when he took a phone call and said, 'John, he’s alive,' and I was overjoyed," he said. "I got to Stanley as quick as I could. It was a pretty heartfelt reunion to see Tom and just be so thankful that he was alive."

Haugh gave Gray a lift down to Challis, interviewing him along the way about what happened. He knew Gray was a veteran boater, capable and experienced, but yet he probed: "When I asked him why he ran it by himself, he said, 'Well, my partner died two years ago.'"

"He’s got 46 years of running whitewater, so he was highly experienced, highly skilled," Haugh said. "But from the marine deputy standpoint and a fellow boater, I was just happy he was wearing a drysuit, happy he was wearing a high-quality floatation device, wearing a helmet. But I was just like, 'Gee, Tom, why didn’t you go with somebody else?'"

But Haugh also marveled at Gray's fortitude and tenacity to survive five days in the wilderness, injured and without any resources.

"For a 73-year-old man to do that in a drysuit in freezing temperatures — and he carried his PFD and helmet the whole way — it’s just incredible," he said. "Testimony to the human spirit."

Gray said he pushed through the ordeal with prayer, and concern for his family, particularly with Lori depending on him through cancer treatments and recovery from a broken leg.

"This would not be a good time for me to die, so I just toughed it up," he said. "The thing that troubles me the most is that I worried my wife and my daughter so much, just with one wrong decision. The one bad mistake was going ahead and floating Dagger Falls."

Lori had a similar take: "Tom is experienced. His problem was the bad decision to float Dagger Falls.

"Tom is a unique person," she continued. "He’s just Tom, and there’s nothing you can do change any of that, nor would you want to. He’s just Tom — Tom and the river."

After all, she said, he set a precedent early: "Before I met him, he missed our first date because he had been in a car accident and was in a coma for seven days."

This time, though, she and their daughter really thought he was dead. And that, to Gray, crossed a line that he hadn't before. He's going to buy a satellite communication device, he said. And he's finished with the early-season floats.

"I promised my wife I’m never going to run Marsh Creek again in May," he said. "She said, 'Yeah, 'cause we were preparing your burial.' My daughter, it was funny, she said, 'Dad, you’ve always come back, I only thought you were 95% dead.'"