Borough man dies in Wrangell-St. Elias

WRANGELL-ST.ELIAS — A man died Saturday after becoming separated from a rafting partner on the Tana River, authorities said.

Personnel with the Forest Service Park/Preserve and Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson Rescue Coordination Center recovered the body of Rob Kehrer about 4 p.m., Sunday afternoon from a small mid-stream island among some rocks, according to Chief Ranger Peter Christian. On recovery, Kehrer’s remains were sent to Providence Hospital in Anchorage.

While the Wrangell-St. Elias region has become notorious recently for the large number of missing persons cases in the area, confirmed fatalities are relatively rare, Christian said.

Kehrer’s death is, in part, a cautionary tale about the dangers of glacier-fed rivers, Christian said. Kehrer was well-known in wilderness circles as a back-country traveler, though authorities are unsure about his rafting proficiency, Christian said.

“Even technically competent people that can negotiate rapids can be in danger,” he said. “The rivers up here … many of them are glacially fed and very cold.”

It wasn’t immediately clear which part of the borough Kehrer hailed from. A borough property search turned one result: a cabin on Red Shirt Lake west of Houston, near the Susitna River, though it couldn’t immediately be verified that the cabin was owned by the man who perished.

Wrangell-St. Elias poses many potential dangers for the unprepared, Chrisitian said.

“It’s an incredibly large, rugged, and remote park and people need to come prepared to rescue themselves,” he said.