Thomas Gray survives river that claimed his brother before

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.

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, Gray ran 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. 

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