Selway River deaths a cascade of tragedy

LEWISTON – One of the two men who perished on the Selway River earlier this month suffered a massive heart attack.

The other drowned in a mishap that cascaded from the frantic effort to save the first.

Matt Lane, 35, and Daniel Trianafillou, 41, lost their lives on the river. They were both professional whitewater guides from Colorado on a private, early-season rafting trip down the river that carves its way through the 1.3-million-acre Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness.

This account comes from interviews with one member of the team made up of expert rafters and one member of Lane’s family.

Shane Turnbull, who was on the trip, is a rafting outfitter from Western Washington who trained Lane and gave him his first guiding job. Ruth Lane is the older sister of Matt Lane – a guide with 15 years of experience who had run the Selway each of the previous five years.

On May 10, the rafters and kayakers pulled into an eddy downstream of Double Drop Rapid for a group meeting. Looming ahead was Ladle, a boulder-strewn Class IV rapid made even more difficult by the surging river, followed in quick procession by a string of Class III and IV rapids.

The Selway was swollen with spring snowmelt and reaching a level that brings extra peril. Turnbull said they had hiked downriver to scout Ladle that morning and he and Matt decided it would be best to portage it or line their boats through its more difficult top end. They pushed off to proceed downstream, but the Hyside Mini Max raft that Lane and another man were in flipped when it hit the seam of the eddy.

It was a mistake but not an emergency. They quickly righted the small, maneuverable raft. Lane held on to the back of a kayak as he prepared to get back in the boat.

“All of a sudden his eyes went blank and he just kind of let go of the kayak and slipped into the water,” Turnbull said. “He was in the water for like two seconds. I’m not kidding about that. It was only two seconds and they grabbed him really quick.”

The other members of the trip pulled Lane into a boat and then swung into another eddy – this one much smaller at the base of a talus slope. They put him on a backboard and immediately started CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

In the rush to treat Lane, they didn’t secure the boats. The river surged and at least one of the boats slipped off the mossy rocks. Trianafillou, who goes by Rescue or Rescue Dan, went after it. He and the passenger on his boat were carried downstream. Turnbull said it would have been better to let the boat go.

“Dan didn’t know that the rapid was right around the corner and, with the water being so fast, he didn’t have time to pull over, and so he flipped over in that rapid,” Turnbull said.

Another party of kayakers that had just run Ladle did what they could to help the pair.

“They saw her swim and rescued her, but she had lost track of Rescue Dan as they were going through the rapid down below Ladle and so she got to shore, but Rescue Dan swam a couple miles, and, of course, he drowned.”

The kayakers initiated CPR on Dan, but he did not respond.

The members of the party working on Matt wouldn’t learn of Dan’s fate until later in the day. The group included experienced guides well versed in CPR and an emergency room technician. A registered nurse hiking the Selway Trail helped. Members of the party ran upstream to Moose Creek Ranger Station to fetch a portable defibrillator. They worked on him for three hours before EMTs from a Life Flight helicopter pronounced him dead.

Turnbull said during that time they never felt a pulse.

After the trip, Turbull and others shared their accounts with Matt’s family. Ruth Lane said her mother and stepfather decided to have a private autopsy performed in Seattle.

According to the preliminary report, he suffered what is known as a widowmaker heart attack caused by blockage of the left anterior descending artery. She said the pathologist told them Matt was the youngest person he had seen to suffer that type of cardiac arrest and that his artery was almost entirely blocked.

“There was almost nothing that could have been done in that moment to save him. He was dead instantly, essentially,” Ruth Lane said, repeating the pathologist’s words.

They were told he may have died even if it had happened in an emergency room.

“There was no evidence of drowning. His lungs were clear of water and full of air,” she said.

Her brother loved the outdoors, natural history and was a talented guitarist who was looking forward to playing in a music festival this summer.

“The Selway was his very favorite place on earth. He just absolutely loved it.”

She was comforted to learn from his friends that her brother was “Mr. Safety on the river.” All of the members of the trip wore dry suits and helmets. They were skilled boaters with training in wilderness first aid. Most had logged previous early season trips on the Selway.

“I’m so sad about his loss, and especially sad that the chaos resulted in his friend’s death. And you know, just that all of these people who loved the whitewater and this trip as much as Matt did, now have this trauma around it,” she said. “But I am so happy that he was in a place that he loved, with people that he loved.

“He was in just a really happy place, emotionally.”

In a guest book to his online obituary, Dan’s friends and family described him as selfless with a contagious laugh. He grew up in Michigan and loved the outdoors, skiing and soccer. In addition to guiding, he ran a hot dog stand at Buena Vista, Colorado.

Turnbull said each of the group members love rafting and were attracted to the Selway not so much by its big rapids but because it is such a special place.

“When people ask me why I do it, it’s because of all that,” Turnbull said.

“Being able to drift through some of the more remote places with the most beautiful scenery that you’ll never see from a road and the camaraderie that goes with it.”