"He was water in motion in a human form," says Bootdoctors' Bob Gleason, remembering Russell Kelly, who died last year, on Aug. 9.

Kelly, who worked as a kayak guide for Bootdoctors, died in a single car accident en route to meet Gleason at the Outdoor Retailer Show, in Nevada; he had just returned from Russia.

"They were in Siberia, actually," Gleason says, of the trip that originated in Bozeman, Mont. "They had done a bunch of really horrendous first descents.

"Things that looked at first like there was no way you would be able to do it, and then, just doing it."

On the river, Gleason says, Kelly "was out there in his world. It was unbelievable. He was delighted, every moment of it, there was always a smile on his face.

"He was absolutely world class."

Fellow guide Bill Glasscock comes to the phone. "Telluride has been greatly affected by three losses on Aug. 9," he says. It's the date when renowned photographer T.R. Youngstrom died, nearly a decade ago, in a helicopter crash in South America. Two years ago, clinical psychologist John McCarron, an avid skier, unicyclist and mountainbiker, died, from cancer, on Aug. 9.