Douglas C. Gordon

[4] The team decided to stick nonetheless to their plan of running the parts of the Tsangpo which they could, and carry their boats where they could not, even though they now expected a larger portion of hiking.

After two days, Jamie McEwan slid from the rocks on the river side into the water before having completely secured his spraydeck.

On October 16, after 35 miles (60 km) of the originally intended route, the team advanced and scouted on the river-left ledge.

He chose a route over a waterfall of 8 feet (2 m), hugging the river-left, in order to boof (skip over) a rock at its bottom and land in an eddy current (calmer water) beneath.

He did not manage to upright his boat ("roll up") at once, but was flushed out of the hydraulic, towards the middle of the Tsangpo—passing approximately 100 yards (90 m) from Tom McEwan, far out of reach of the safety line.

Two further roll attempts failed, however, and he was swept into a succession of rapids which Tom McEwan later described as "a certainly fatal series of recirculating hydraulics.

"[8] His team members later conjectured that Gordon had not managed to roll up because he had been partly pulled out of his boat, as had happened to him once before earlier on the trip.

On October 20, the three paddlers and the ground team members met 8.5 miles (10 km) below the place where the accident had occurred.

Kayaker Scott Lindgren employed an international crew of 87 people from seven countries to support the descent of several paddlers.

This part of the documentary, which has also found its way onto the internet, gives a somewhat misleading account of the circumstances of Gordon's death, as evidenced by online comments on the video.

In addition, video from briefly before Gordon's death shows how he approached the waterfall, and how his boat was sucked into the hydraulic at the bottom of the fall, flipped over, and finally flushed out.

[11] The voice of one of the other three paddlers is heard, however, commenting on the moment when Gordon was swept into the hydraulics in the middle of the river: "I saw him disappear into the first hole, and I never saw him again.

He later lived in Kinburn, Ontario, and then in Cornwall Bridge, Connecticut, where he worked for Advanced Technology Materials, Inc. At the time of his death, he was a doctoral candidate at the University of Utah.