Will was a great friend and an extremely experienced whitewater kayaker who had run Great Falls many times in the past. On this day, we decided to run Virginia lines, the level was 3.2ft, we put on around 1:47pm on May 3rd, 2026. All three of us felt comfortable and all had paddled Great Falls many times in the past. The first two rapids went well. We caught the eddy above spout and Will paddled it first, then Spencer ran it. I was last. After running spout, I saw Will in the top eddy on the left side. He was upright, looking comfortable and stable, and said “Ay sick line!” to me as I paddled down to join Spencer in the lower eddy at the tip of the flake. He asked where Will was and I responded that he’d caught the higher eddy. We talked for another 45 seconds before I became concerned I hadn’t seen Will come down yet. I paddled back out into the current to see around the corner and saw Will upside down against the wall trying unsuccessfully to roll. My guess is that he flipped in the current as he tried to ferry out of the top eddy and was then pushed into the wall and was unable to roll due to the angle and current.
I told Spencer that Will needed help as I went back around the corner into the eddy, got out of my boat, grabbed a throw bag and climbed up on the rock to try and get in a place to help. I saw Will’s boat pinned up against the wall maybe 15 feet upstream of where I was. I handed my throw bag to Spencer and asked him to rig it to me for live bait as I kept looking in the water for Will. We had difficulty unlocking the carabiner for my tether for another 20 seconds. I then got a glimpse of Will in the water, maybe six feet deep at the extent of the visibility, not showing any signs of swimming, and decided I needed to get to him. I’m not sure if he was stuck somehow or just hadn’t floated up yet but as soon as I saw him and saw he wasn’t moving, I decided to go get to him. I jumped in without the line, grabbed Will and kicked off the rocks to get us away from the wall as I tried to push him forward ahead of me out into the current.
At this time, I didn’t know how potentially undercut the wall was or what state Will was in. I wanted to get him away from the wall and into the current, I thought it was unlikely I would be able to swim him back into the small eddy below the flake. Based on the fact that he wasn’t swimming and I didn’t know how bad the rock was, I thought this was the correct decision. When I surfaced next to him, I saw he was totally unconscious. I tried to wake him up as we floated through the next wave train. I did my best to keep his head out of the water as we floated down, it was difficult to do this through the waves. During this time, I was yelling 911 to people on the shore whenever possible and was still trying to wake Will up. Throughout, he was unconscious and never coughed or moved at all.
As we got to the end of the rapid, I swam him to the first available spot on the shore and dragged him up on the rocks where he was stable enough for CPR. I started doing CPR and rescue breaths until Spencer and people on the shore arrived to help soon after. There were moments during CPR where he seemed to almost start breathing and his face, blue when I got him out of the water, began to get some color. River rescue arrived after maybe 15-20 minutes and loaded him onto the boat.
I was recording this trip on strava on my watch and have pieced together an approximate timeline based on that: the time from when I saw him last upright to the time I was able to get his head out of the water was about three minutes, he flipped somewhere within that time, then it took another minute and a half for us to float the next rapid and for me to get him on shore and start CPR.
The run was on the Virginia side of the falls. Level was 3.2
A full accident report sent by Spencer to a GF paddle chat:
Hello. It is with horrible sadness that I tell you Will Lankford and he did not make it. I’m happy to tell it in more detail, but this is the basic story of what happened: Will went first on the spout. I went second, flipped, and rolled up and caught the eddy. John Woodward came last and came into the eddy with me.
I looked around and said, “Where did Will go?” John peered around the corner and saw him up upright, starting to paddle to ferry. I couldn’t see from where I was, and then John and I were talking. Then John looked panicked and said he was pinned against the wall. I jumped out of my boat and climbed on the corner of the flake. I saw his head above water briefly with his feet pressed against the wall, but I didn’t make eye contact. Then he slowly submerged.
John climbed up beside me. John told me to live bait him. I struggled to open the carabiner on his tether, so John jumped right in. They both emerged and were floating down O-Deck. Will was limp. I yelled at spectators to call 911. Neither of us saw him flip or when he could’ve gotten a breath, so he could’ve been under between 1-4 minutes I would say. I paddled down and met them on rocks at Fisherman’s. We did CPR for a long time until paramedics came and took over. Numerous bystanders including a nurse helped us.
EMS loaded him on a boat and took him to Angler’s. Later somebody said they got a pulse in the ambulance. I’m so sorry everyone. This is so awful. Please let me know if you know any way I can be helpful to his parents or anybody.
From Bill Kirby – When the river goes over the Spout most of the water goes downstream thru O-deck but there is a pretty strong current that runs straight against the wall on ruver left that forms the cauldron at the base of the Spout. The wall is the bottom end of the flake. If you wash against the wall you’re pretty much doomed to a swim because it is undercut just enough to force you over and the current is too strong to roll against. Countless people have done this and flushed out safely but it looks like Will was pinned just long enough to drown.
So many people are aware of the fatal accident that happened at Great Falls last Sunday (5/3/26) where Will Lankford tragically lost his life, and many people are wondering how a fatal drowning could occur at the bottom of Great Falls, after the paddlers had already successfully navigated the “main drops” of the Virginia line. For people not familiar with the area, Great Falls is a very impressive stretch of class V drops on the Potomac River right outside of Washington DC. There are 4 ways to navigate the series of drops, the Maryland, Center, Virginia, and Fish Ladder lines. All present unique challenges and hazards, but the Virginia lines on the far river right are generally considered one of the “less” hazardous routes through Great Falls due to the lack of the caves found the landing zone of the center lines (Subway where Todd Andrew, and Shannon Christy lost their lives in 2004, and 2013) or the hole on the Maryland side (Charlies Hole where Scott Bristow drowned back in November of 1998) The Virginia lines of Great Falls consist of 3 rapids, U Hole is the top drop, followed by a twisting rapid called S Bend, followed by the finale that is called “The Spout” an 18-22 foot waterfall which is the highest single drop on Great Falls. The accident last Sunday occurred almost 50 feet below the last major drop, and was the result of a paddler getting washed into a sheer wall of rock that separates the various Great Falls lines, that paddlers use to hike back up for multiple laps. It is called “The Flake,” and is by far the most prominent mass of rocks that separates the various different lines from each other.
Although there is no video of the accident that occurred last Sunday as far as I’m aware, there is another video from around 2 years ago that one of my friends David Crane shot of an almost identical accident that occurred in the exact same spot that Will drowned in. I have reached out to David, and have gotten permission to post his video in the hopes that it will allow paddlers to understand how a fatal accident could occur in such a seemingly “easy” stretch of Great Falls, after all the major drops are already over with. So after you drop off the last major drop of the Virginia side of Great Falls (The Spout), there is a large open area that is surrounded by the river right observation decks, and fisherman’s eddy that paddlers use to put into the Mather Gorge directly below Great Falls. The main current falls 18 feet off The Spout, and around 75% of the river’s volume pushes to the right and into calmer water. However, the other 25% slams directly into a huge rock feature known as “The Flake” and rebounds into the main current at an awkward angle. Paddlers who flip on the landing of The Spout have between 5 and 10 seconds to roll before getting swept into this wall, and even less time at higher water levels. This wall of rock is usually thought of more as an annoyance than a deadly hazard, as it has caused countless swims, but paddlers usually always flush out downstream.
This accident occurred around 2 years ago, but is literally identical to the fatal accident that occurred last Sunday, with the only difference being a water level of 3 feet, versus a water level of 3.2 feet. In this video, you can see David run The Spout, and immediately turn around to watch Sam flip upon landing, successfully roll up, but then get pushed into the rock wall that forms The Flake. She manages to hit a roll, but the current is so strong that it immediately pushes her straight back into the wall, and holds the boat there, making a swim inevitable. Even at this lower water level, you can see Sam immediately start to get sucked underwater as soon as she is out of her boat, but she manages to stabilize herself by using her feet to hold herself in place, and backstroke to fight the current pushing into the wall and keep her head above water. At this lower water level, she managed to keep herself stable until David could climb up The Flake and get her a throw rope to pull her out of the danger zone. This was not the case at the slightly higher water level of 3.2 feet when Will’s accident occurred. From what I heard, Will attempted to use his feet exactly like Sam did to keep himself off of the wall, yet was pulled completely underwater and held there for multiple minutes before John and Spencer heroically risked their own lives in a desperate attempt to pull him clear of the body pin.
I reached out to Charlie Walbridge with the full consent of the paddlers featured in this video in an attempt to show an almost identical accident that occurred years ago, to allow people to understand how dangerous this spot is at higher water levels. The accident in the video I linked luckily turned out okay, but with less than .2 more feet of water, it held an expert and extremely fit paddler underwater for an unsurvivable amount of time. David’s video does an excellent job of showing how an experienced paddler can get into trouble there despite a successful run down The Spout, and how nasty that wall can be even at a lower water level. This video demonstrates how quick things can go wrong, but more importantly, where you need to climb up to with a rope in order to attempt a rescue of a paddler in a similar situation. I really hope David’s excellent video allows people to understand what happened, and raises awareness of just how dangerous seemingly “easy” spots of Great Falls can be depending on water levels and conditions. I am so sorry to everyone involved in the accident on Sunday, Will’s family and friends, and the local paddling community who will have last Sunday’s incident etched into their brains for the rest of their lives.