Barbara Lawlor,  Boulder.   “You guys got any rope?” A young man approached a couple of guys at Eben Fine Park at the bottom of Boulder Canyon on Saturday evening. He said his friend was sitting on a rock in the middle of the creek and the water was going too fast for him to get off. He had hiked to the park looking for help.

It didn’t sound good and the guys called 911. A Nederland resident heading down the canyon also saw the tuber sitting on a rock and called 911 around 7:30 p.m. Within a few minutes, people gathered along the highway yelling at the man not to move and emergency crews from myriad Boulder agencies rallied to prepare for a technical white water rescue.

BCSO deputies, the Boulder Police Department, Boulder Fire and Rescue, Boulder Emergency Services, Sunshine Fire Department, Four Mile Fire Department, AMR Ambulance and Rocky Mountain Rescue Group coordinated the effort to safely rescue the man. First, they set up downstream rescuers in case the man slipped into the raging rapids. Rescue lines were set up across the creek to carry an empty raft to the other side where a member of the dive team got into the raft with a life vest and helmet for the victim and went to the rock to assist the man into the raft.

He was wet, cold and banged up from the upstream rocks but otherwise safe and wiser. Late spring snowmelt cubic feet per second tubing bans are usually put in place when they reach that level. The successful rescue was complete around 8:30 p.m.

Boulder Canyon traffic was limited to one lane for a couple of hours.

(Originally published in the June 14, 2018, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)