On June 15 Kayaker Livia Stoyke, 32, drowned on the Class III-IV Mistaya River in Baniff National Park. Details are pretty sketchy, but it appears that she was with seven other kayakers when she flipped and swam. It took some time to get her ashore, and one correspondent theorized that she might have gone over a waterfall.
from the Edmonton Journal
Monday, June 17, 2002
Several bystanders risked their lives in the rushing water of Banff National Park’s Mistaya Canyon trying to help an Edmonton-area woman who drowned after her kayak flipped Saturday night. The 32-year-old woman was running the river with a group of seven other kayakers, all from the Edmonton area. They tried to revive her using cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The kayakers strung a rope across the river from the island where they were doing CPR to the shore, in the hope that others could get across to help, park warden Gord Irwin said Sunday.
After a couple tried that, the rope broke and cooler heads prevailed and said that’s not a good idea,” he said. The accident happened about 6 pm, just minutes after the group of eight close friends put their kayaks in the water. The plan was to take a 15-minute trip down the canyon, Lake Louise RCMP Const. France Levesque said.
Experienced--over 30 years' experience among the 8
paddlershttp://boatertalk.com/forum/BoaterTalk/173470
