River Of Tears -- As Friends, Family Mourn Loss Of Kayaker Richie Weiss, They Celebrate His Passion For Life

BZ CORNER, Klickitat County - This is where the river roars. Loud, incessant pounding like a symphony of drums. The thunder emanates from a swirl of pine-green water as it cascades over a rocky gorge, a remote, steep drop along the upper White Salmon River.

Richie Weiss, two-time Olympian, hydrogeologist, expectant father, a man as pure as the river water he was running, drove a buoyant kayak over this ledge into the tumult with just the slightest hesitation.

Funny, a friend recalled later to Klickitat County search and rescue officials, Weiss usually "went immediately."

The friend, John Trijillo, a kayaker from Hood River, Ore., who learned to paddle on the Deschutes River when he was 6, was waiting below the falls known as "Big Brother" when Weiss descended last month.

The air temperature was 65 degrees. The water, 45. They were two of the country's most experienced kayakers alone on a treacherous section of river doing what they had done numerous times. Doing a quintessential Northwest endeavor: searching for a moment of solitude on a wild stretch of river at arm's length from the hubbub of humanity.

Trijillo, 23, a lanky, olive-skinned man who pulls back his thick, dark hair into a bun, nodded to his friend above that it was OK to enter the churning water, according to a Klickitat County accident report.

Weiss, 33, his wife of nine years waiting for him and his friend at the Washington hamlet of BZ Corner four miles downstream, descended.

Although he had run this section in higher, and thus, more dangerous water, something happened. Something slight, unforeseen.

Weiss, wearing a protective helmet, a dry-suit top and wet-suit bottom, veered too far right. His boat got caught in an eddy near a cave, the accident report said. He didn't surface. Trijillo waited and waited and Weiss did not surface.

Trijillo tried to find him in the roiling whiteness. He couldn't. He then climbed a narrow, 200-foot granite-walled canyon covered with maidenhair fern to get help.

Life of dogged determination

Edith Weiss, 60, a ski instructor in Steamboat Springs, Colo., wants to come here next year. She wants to see the section of river that took her son. About 15 years ago, she went to a Canary Island beach where her husband, Richie's father, drowned in a body-surfing accident more than a decade before. She was three months pregnant with her daughter, Cornelia, at the time of the accident. Richie was not yet 2.

Edith, a German, had no family in the United States but her children. Richie Weiss' wife, Rosi, is South African. She is seven months pregnant. She also has no family here.

Too many parallels, Edith thinks. "When will this nightmare end?" she asks softly.

Richie's father, Mack, was a national-caliber 50-kilometer racewalker. He never made the Olympic team because he suffered from arthritis, Edith said.

"It was always Richie's dream to fulfill his father's dream in the Olympics," she said.

And thus began a life of dogged determination, goodwill and perfection. Yes, perfection. Even in defeat, Weiss was the perfect gentleman. The U.S. Olympic Committee gave him the Jack Kelly Fair Play Award in 1989 for handling a controversial gate-touching penalty at the World Championships that dropped him from second to fifth.

They could have given it to him again after the '92 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. He lost a bronze medal in the whitewater slalom when judges cited him for touching a gate. Television replays, fellow kayakers said, showed it never happened.

It was not Weiss' nature to complain. Too much to do. While becoming one of the world's best whitewater kayakers, Weiss earned a master's degree in hydrogeology at Penn State and a doctorate in geological sciences at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

After the Atlanta Olympics, he and Rosi moved to Hood River, where Weiss started an environmental consulting firm. His nameplate remains on the building at 205 Oak Street, in downtown.

"I'm so thankful Richie did what he wanted to do," Edith Weiss said. "I'm glad he died doing what he loved most, and that was kayaking.

"A lot of people live lives that are very sterile. He loved his life. When our time is up, it's up. His love and spirit will never die."

After Mack Weiss drowned, Edith took the children to the ocean but didn't warn them to be careful.

"I really wanted them to not fear the water," she said. "I swim every day. But I'm afraid of the water."

After her son's death, she walked to a Rocky Mountain waterfall and said she suddenly felt better.

"Next year I'm rafting down the Grand Canyon for Richie," Edith said. "He never got to do this. He wanted to do so many more things."

Weiss already was doing more than most. He was as successful in his occupation as his avocation. Friends and family say he was overjoyed to have a baby with Rosi, whom he met at a kayaking race in Europe. They had tried before without success.

After finishing sixth in the Atlanta Games, Weiss exited the water with a wide grin and threw his wife a kiss. Others might have been disappointed to not earn a medal, but Weiss enjoyed what he had instead of worrying about what he didn't.

Growing up on a five-acre lot in Steamboat Springs, Weiss had so much. The adventurous spirit of the West coursed through his veins like a fast-running rail. He learned to ski at 1 1/2. His sister, Cornelia, a Telluride, Colo., lawyer, is an extreme skier.

He took up the single-minded pursuit of kayaking with the help of Tom Steitz, today the U.S. Nordic combined Olympic coach.

Weiss found an old kayak behind his house and started paddling. He enjoyed the sport so much, he wanted to upgrade his boat. A local man had two kayaks, but refused to sell one to the teen.

Weiss pestered the man until he finally gave in: "OK, if you can beat me in a race, I'll sell you a boat," he said.

Although technically outclassed, Weiss won the race and bought the boat.

A straight-A student, high-school wrestling champion, accomplished musician and comfortable speaking German or Spanish, Weiss was driven at whatever he tried.

Weiss and Steitz practiced on the Yampa River near Steamboat Springs while others skied. They used an ax to break the ice and enter the frozen water.

"It wasn't the right thing to do, but at the time it seemed like it was," Steitz recalled. "When I think of chopping the ice, freezing our hands . . . We didn't get much done technically . . . but the flame inside you burns a little hotter. There was a desire in that kid nobody was going to extinguish."

That is the legacy he left U.S. kayaking. With Weiss, it was not enough to be a national champion. He had to compete internationally.

"He showed us how," said Scott Shipley, a Poulsbo Olympian. "When I lived with him, we trained barefoot in the snow for years. Richie was impervious to the cold. We'd have all this stuff on and he'd have one nylon jacket on. Icicles were coming off his helmet."

Shipley, then a junior world champion, once was doing exhausting intervals with Weiss in British Columbia. Weiss kept trying to pass him in the 30-minute exercise they called "McLoops."

After it ended, Shipley was spent and lay on a rock to recover. He was shivering in the 18-degree temperatures. Feeling better, Shipley picked up his boat and started walking to his car.

Suddenly Weiss yelled, "All right, you design the next course!"

"I'm like, what?" Shipley recalled. "I was the No. 2 boat in the country and I was doing exactly half the workout Richie was. That was my big wake-up call."

Weiss was the first American to win a world championship medal when he placed second in 1993 in Italy. He was 16th in Barcelona before finishing sixth in Atlanta. Weiss did not compete with the U.S. team this summer.

Instead, he enjoyed the White Salmon, in which parts are a national Wild and Scenic river fed by Mount Adams snowmelt. The river flows effortlessly from snow-covered Adams to the mighty Columbia at the state line.

Weiss was considering whether to enter the Timberline Gorge Games, a celebration of extreme outdoor sports such as sailboarding, mountain biking, snowboarding and kayaking ending today.

"Richie wasn't an extreme kayaker, not really," said Steitz's wife, Kathy.

Not in the commercialized, ESPN2 go-for-it sense that characterizes the Gorge Games.

Ten years ago, Weiss and Steitz ran rivers considered the outer limits of kayaking. But they kept it to themselves. Steitz hears kayakers today brag about running a river in Colorado, then chuckles to himself.

"Rich and I did that years ago and we never bothered to tell anybody," Steitz said. "But he never got in over his head."

Challenges faced, not avoided

Friends fear some will think Weiss should not have attempted "Big Brother" on June 25, when the river was running high. They fear kayaking will get a bad reputation and Class V rapids - the extreme black diamonds of the sport - will be closed as a precaution.

Those who know him best say Weiss, a 5-foot-9, 170-pound paddler, was as capable as anyone to plunge over "Big Brother" into the washing-machine madness below.

"It was not some sort of daredevilish thing," Steitz said. "Maybe for other boaters, but not for Rich."

Nonetheless, inherent dangers exist on any Class V-designated water.

"This is the most extreme you could do in a kayak," Shipley said. "It's not the kind of thing where if you trip over your paddle, that's it. I won't finish (this run) and say, `Wow, I'm alive.' "

Edith Weiss doesn't want friends to dwell on death. She knows if the incident happened to her son, it can happen to anyone.

"Richie knew what he was doing," she said. "He knew the dangers. His whole philosophy of life was to face challenge, not to avoid it.

"If you don't live on the edge, you take up too much space. . . . I like that expression. It means you do what you believe you should be doing. It's probably much better to die this way than sitting in a wheelchair or getting cancer. Maybe it is hard on us but not on the person who died."

The Gorge Games kayaking course was shortened because of the accident. It started in a placid green pool below "Big Brother" out of respect to the widow, although a number of competitors navigated the Class V rapids and falls to get to the race's start.

Rosi Weiss does not want to talk publicly about her husband, friends said. It is understandable. Weiss was her life and it is all too soon.

Three weeks after the accident, Trijillo is standing on the ledge above "Big Brother." He still cannot bear the thought of what happened.

He does not want Weiss' death or the sport to be dissected and scrutinized by outsiders. He will not recount that fateful evening last month.

But as he looks into this roaring drop with fellow kayakers, he will find this is not where Weiss' life ends. It is where good memories begin. Where those who knew Weiss best are thankful he lived.

A fine mist rises from the falls, sending thousands of tiny tears floating toward the heavens. Thousands of water droplets wetting the faces of the bereaved peering into the abyss where a powerful spirit stirs.

The river is crying for Richie Weiss.

--------------- Rosi Weiss fund ---------------

A fund has been established for Rosi Weiss, who is expecting in the fall. Contributions can be made to the Richard Weiss Memorial Fund, Colorado Community First National Bank, P.O. Box 2948, Steamboat Springs, Colo., 80477.