Rule 2 / Case 10 - The Rock Lake Tragedy
- Moulton Avery
- Nov 21, 2021
- 11 min read
Updated: Apr 24
Always Dress For The Water Temperature
Christopher Gormley
April 1, 2012 - Rock Lake, Washington
The Accident
On a cold morning in April 2012, a group of seven paddlers drove from Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, to Rock Lake, a remote body of water about an hour southwest of the city. They brought with them two double kayaks and three singles. When they launched their kayaks from the boat ramp around 10:30am, four women were paddling the two doubles, and three men were each paddling one of the singles. In less than two and half hours, six of them would be badly traumatized and one of them, Christopher Gormley, a freshman honors student, would be dead.
The trip was led by Brandon LeBaron, a 23-year-old, temporary seasonal employee of the Spokane Parks and Recreation Department. He was assisted by Mary Tamtsch, a volunteer from Gonzaga Outdoors, the university’s outing club, which had contracted with the parks and recreation department to provide the equipment and guide for the trip.
Rock Lake is seven miles long and roughly half a mile wide, and much of the shoreline is rugged and steep, with long sections of vertical cliffs - a configuration that often increases the forecasted wind speed and accounts for the lake’s well-deserved reputation for developing large waves.
The area immediately surrounding the lake is also sparsely inhabited, with only a few houses along its entire length. It was a very dangerous place for them to be kayaking on that particular day and would have been even if they were highly skilled, well-equipped paddlers - which they definitely were not.
Earlier that morning, at 3:37am, the National Weather Service issued a wind advisory that warned of sustained southwest winds at 25 to 30 mph with gusts of up to 50 mph. The strongest winds were expected between 11:00am and 3:00pm. SW winds were known to produce the largest waves on the lake, and the wind velocity and wave height would have rapidly increased as the paddlers moved away from the boat ramp and headed down the lake.
To make matters even worse, the air temperature was near freezing, the water temperature was 40F (4.4C), and although they all wore PFDs, nobody but LeBaron, the trip leader, had any thermal protection. He had a wetsuit; the others were wearing street clothes. Gormley, for example, was wearing athletic pants, two layers of shirts and a rain jacket.
At 8am, about two hours before the kayakers arrived, Charles Connor, a Spokane angler, showed up at the lake. He took one look at the waves from the boat ramp and didn't even bother to launch his 16-foot deep-hulled fishing boat.
"I should have checked the weather forecast before I drove all the way out there”, he said. "It was cold, sleeting or spitting rain and there wasn't another car in the parking lot. "It was super windy”, he added. “It was rough at the launch area, and that's usually the calmest part of the lake. It gets a lot worse out in the middle, so I turned around and headed home. When he heard the news of the fatality that night, he said, "I was a little floored that they decided to go out that day, from what I saw - and the reputation of that lake."
A Desperate Situation
The paddlers themselves told deputies that the wind was strong when they started paddling, but that the waves became much bigger when they had paddled about 1 mile and were midway between the two rocky shores. This indicates that they were paddling down the center of the lake rather than along either shore. The lake at that point is about 850 yards (777 meters) wide, meaning that a kayaker who capsized in the center would have to swim a distance greater than 4 football fields to reach shore.
Tucker Brinkman was the first to capsize. He later told deputies that he became concerned about the conditions, but as he tried to head to shore he was tipped over by a wave. This would not be surprising to any experienced paddler. The waves were large, steep, and closely spaced at this point, and as soon as the paddlers turned towards shore, both the wind gusts and the waves would have been coming at them from the rear quarter or directly from the side - a situation that novice paddlers find particularly destabilizing.
When Brinkman capsized, LeBaron came to his aid and began to attempt an assisted kayak-to-kayak rescue in waves that were reported by the paddlers - and later, the emergency responders - to be up to 5 feet tall. He didn’t seem to realize that for novice paddlers, in those conditions, rescue would be an impossible task. As he unsuccessfully tried to pump water out of Brinkman's kayak, LeBaron noticed that Gormley had also capsized. LeBaron then used a rope to tow Brinkman and his boat over to assist Gormley, but soon LeBaron also capsized.
Meanwhile, the women in the doubles had managed to paddle ashore. However, there was no cell service in the area, so one of them, Kristie Slattengren, ran uphill from the lake desperately looking for help. Shortly before noon, she found one of the few homes in the area - which was unoccupied at the time - and called 911 on the home’s landline.
The three men reportedly spent about 20 futile minutes trying to get back into their kayaks before deciding to swim toward shore. This was a fatal mistake that will be discussed in greater detail below. As we note in our Water Temperature Safety Guide, 40F (4.4C) water is so cold that it feels like it’s burning your skin.
Without the protection of a wetsuit or drysuit, sudden immersion causes immediate, life-threatening, maximum-intensity cold shock. This means a total loss of breathing control - gasping, hyperventilating, extreme difficulty holding your breath, a feeling of suffocation, and difficulty thinking and acting. Survival becomes a desperate race against the clock as cold water incapacitation begins to rob you of the use of your hands, then your arms, and eventually your legs.
When they finally abandoned their kayaks, both Brinkman and Gormley were very badly chilled. In the incident report, Brian Keller, of the Whitman County Sheriff’s Office describes a terrifying and desperate struggle in which Gormley quickly lost the use of his arms and was unable to swim.
“Tucker [Brinkman] said he asked Christopher what he was doing and said Christopher just kept yelling for help. He told me he was yelling at Christopher to keep swimming, but he would not move. Tucker told me he tried to grab Christopher and pull him with him as he swam but said he was not able to pull him. Tucker told me the waves were crashing over their heads while they were swimming, and said he swallowed a lot of water.”
Brinkman thought that if he could just get to shore, he’d be able to get a kayak and take it back out to Gormley, but he was barely able to make it to shore himself, by which point he reported that he was so cold he couldn’t move. This is not uncommon. Many badly chilled swimmers are unable to stand when they finally reach shore and are barely able to even crawl out of the water. When he looked back, Brinkman said he couldn’t see Gormley because of the big waves.
When they received Slattengren’s 911 call shortly after noon, the Sheriff’s Office responded with remarkable speed. In less than an hour, they had mobilized, gotten to the lake, launched their rescue boat, and found Gormley - despite the large waves and very rough conditions. He was floating face up in his life jacket - but he was unresponsive. By that point, he’d been in the 40F (4.4C) water for 1.5 - 2 hours and efforts to revive him were unsuccessful.
Lessons Learned
This trip broke every Golden Rule of Cold Water Safety with the exception of wearing PFDs. It could easily have resulted in multiple fatalities. The participants, and more importantly, the trip leader, exhibited a stunning lack of awareness of the risks they were taking. They clearly had no awareness of the weather report, and no situational awareness or appreciation for the interaction of wind and waves - or the lethal nature of cold water.
Given the weather forecast alone, the trip should have been cancelled before they ever left Spokane. Likewise, the trip should have been cancelled when they reached the boat ramp and saw the actual conditions, which by that time were certainly no better - and likely worse - than what the angler, Charles Connor, witnessed at 8am.
When a paddler is standing on shore and the wind is blowing away from them, out onto the water, they’re looking at the mildest conditions that they’re going to see. As soon as they move away from shore, and the wind drops down to meet the water, it’s going to begin creating waves, and the farther away from shore they get, the larger those waves are going to be - and the harder it’s going to be to paddle back against the wind. On larger bodies of water, unwary paddlers have been blown miles offshore.
No Way To Turn Back
On a Google Maps satellite image of Rock Lake, it’s clear that the only boat ramp is at the southern end where they launched; there's no takeout at the north end of the lake. Their trip was consequently planned as an “out and back” - launching and returning to the same location. But as soon as they paddled several hundred yards away from the boat ramp, the force of the wind would have made it impossible for them to return, driving them down the 7-mile lake into increasingly larger and larger waves. Also, as you go further down the lake, there are much fewer opportunities to go ashore. In fact, they only made it about a mile before the three single kayaks capsized.
This trip would have been ruled out - even by experienced kayakers who actively seek out larger waves for downwind surfing runs - because heading downwind on Rock Lake is like paddling into a box canyon. There’s no road access at the end, and on that day, large waves reflecting off the canyon walls and refracting around points at the end of the lake would have created an even more dangerous situation, with chaotic water, wave amplification, and multi-directional intersecting wave patterns.
If they’d managed to stay upright it's theoretically possible that they could have taken out halfway down the lake at Johnson's Beach - but only if breaking waves and wave reflection didn't make that impossible. Otherwise, they would have been driven down the lake by the wind until they reached the very end.
Thermal Protection
Despite all these mistakes, the trip would likely have been a very frightening but non-fatal learning experience if they had all been wearing wetsuits - or better yet, properly insulated drysuits. At the one-mile point, when they realized that the conditions were well beyond their ability, the double kayaks managed to make it safely to shore, and Gormley would likely have been able to swim to shore if he’d been properly dressed for immersion.
Failed Rescues
It’s important to note that their rescue attempts were futile. Rough water rescues in conditions that feature large, steep, closely spaced breaking waves are very challenging - even for experienced kayakers who have proper immersion gear and lots of practice. Inexperienced novices stand little or no chance.
Trying to pump out a swamped kayak in rough conditions is exhausting and seldom successful because breaking waves dump water back into the cockpit much faster than anyone can pump. Swamped kayaks are also very unstable, so even if they’d somehow managed to reenter their kayaks, they would likely have capsized again before reaching shore.
Precious time was wasted on this futile rescue activity - time during which Gormley might still have had enough strength to reach shore before the cold completely incapacitated him. But by the time he’d spent 20 minutes trying unsuccessfully to get back in his kayak, his arms were too weakened by cold to swim more than a short distance - leaving him hanging helpless in his life jacket as waves tossed him around and splashed over his head.
As we note on our website, being physically incapacitated in cold, rough water is a classic situation for inhaling more and more water and gradually drowning. It’s just a matter of time - and in 40F (4.4C) water, an average person without thermal protection doesn’t have much time at all.
Major Contributing Factors
This incident included 8 out of 12 major contributing factors (highlighted below).
No PFD (Lifejacket)
Not Dressed For Water Temperature
Unable To Recover From Capsize
Unable to Call For Help (House phone after break-in)
Unaware of Hazards
Being Complacent / Overconfident
Lack of Weather Awareness
Unable To Deal With Wind and Waves
Poor Navigation Skills
No Light - Invisible At Night
Poor Group Management
Paddling Solo
The Aftermath
Christopher’s mother, Susan Gormley, filed a wrongful death lawsuit naming the City of Spokane, Gonzaga University, Gonzaga Student Body Association, and Brandon LeBaron as defendants. This resulted in a $950,000 settlement, with Gonzaga University paying $400,000 and The City of Spokane $550,000.
Negative publicity about this tragedy was widespread. The fact that Gormley’s family felt Gonzaga University handled the situation poorly right from the start was evident in the critical news coverage surrounding the lawsuit, as well as in the suit itself, which stated:
“The Gormleys hoped they could trust Gonzaga, that Gonzaga would not betray them, but were shocked, saddened and outraged as Gonzaga deliberately frustrated their rights as parents and tried to cover up by neglecting to tell the Gormleys the extent of its culpability.”
In its point-by-point response to the lawsuit, Gonzaga - among other things -denied that Rock Lake had a reputation for wind and waves. They also denied another assertion that said, in part:
“Defendants knew or should have known that kayaks are especially prone to capsizing in winds forecast by the National Weather Service, and that the weather forecast was grounds for cancelling the April 1 trip”.
The lawsuit also stated that Gormley had originally signed up and paid for a trip on the Little Spokane River, but that two days before the outing, Gonzaga changed the destination to Rock Lake.
The Little Spokane River is a small, quiet tributary of the Spokane River that originates in the hills north of Spokane and flows about 35 miles southward before joining the Spokane River just west of the city. In glaring contrast to Rock Lake, it's known for its calm, meandering character.
The lawsuit further pointed out that the trip violated the Spokane Parks and Recreation Department’s own written instructor manual which stated that trips were not allowed when the wind speed exceeded 13-18 mph.
Risk Management - Saving Lives and Avoiding Liability
Universities, colleges, schools, parks and recreation departments, outfitters, and others who engage in outdoor recreation programs should pay close attention to this cold water tragedy. It was an easily preventable accident.
With few exceptions, the key question is never going to be whether the individuals leading a cold water trip were certified by some national organization. Or even whether a liability waiver was signed by the participants. It’s always going to be whether or not the outing followed best practices for cold water safety. Participants rightfully expect that a trip will be conducted in a safety-conscious manner, and this trip certainly failed to meet that very reasonable expectation.
Common Questions About Judgement and Actions
Some readers of this report may question why the four kayak paddlers who managed to reach shore without capsizing didn’t come to the aid of the three capsized paddlers.
In fact, because they were wearing no thermal protection and their paddling skills were no match for the conditions, that would have been a terrible idea. As trip leader LaBaron’s experience demonstrates, trying to rescue anyone in those conditions would likely have resulted in four additional people struggling for their lives in bitterly cold water.
From the comfort of an armchair, it’s also tempting to judge Brandon LaBaron very harshly - as if he intentionally and deliberately put the people he was leading in harm’s way. After all, it was arguably his poor leadership and bad judgement that got them into that life-threatening situation in the first place. However, I would argue that he was poorly trained and supervised, and simply didn’t have the knowledge or experience to appreciate how dangerous that trip actually was.
As I note in my article Anatomy of a Bad Decision, and as Laurence Gonzales explains in his excellent book Deep Survival, even experienced trip leaders occasionally overlook the obvious, miss important situational clues, and make mistakes in judgement. That’s why - when it comes to Risk Management - education and training, safety protocols, best practices, and hazard assessments are so important. They’re the foundation of a safety-conscious attitude and good judgement.
Bottom Line
Lots of mistakes were made on this trip, but the biggest mistake was the failure to have everyone - not just the trip leader - dress for the water temperature in wetsuits or drysuits that were sufficient for immersion in 40F (4.4C) water.
