The kayaker, according to Salzburg’s water rescuers, very well equipped to go down white water, disappeared under the surface on Saturday afternoon. This happened after he hit a rock in the Lammerklamm gorge and was pulled to the bottom by the current. “He could no longer get out of the kayak above the surface,” the Salzburg police said.
Rescuers tried to pull the man out of the water until 10:00 p.m. on Saturday. However, due to the high flow of water through the gorge and the ever-rising water level, they were not successful. The event thus continued from Sunday morning.
“The water level dropped overnight as less snow melted in the surrounding mountains due to cooler temperatures,” explained the Salzburg water rescuers. They zeroed in on the spot where they assumed the boater had gotten stuck.
“Where we expected it to be, we found it too,” Markus Gewolf, spokesman for the water rescuers from Bischofshofen, confirmed for the Austrian newspaper Krone. The kayaker’s body was recovered around ten o’clock in the morning on Sunday. Before pulling out the kayak, the rescuers have to wait for the river level in the gorge to drop more.
