Sad to see them pass,, but sometimes they go out the way they would want to go

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The inevitable has happened in the 32-year-old Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic, and 44-year-old Rob Kehrer is dead.

A 10-year veteran of what some consider the toughest wilderness challenge in the world, Kehrer died in the Tana River of Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve on Saturday after apparently launching his packraft a little too soon at the end of the lower river canyon.

Friend and traveling companion Greg Mills told park rangers he saw Kehrer's boat disappear into a boil of cold, glacial water from which it never emerged.

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A big man, always smiling, who spent a good part of his life in the Alaska wilderness, Kehrer was a competent paddler, a description that would fit most of the participants in the Wilderness Classic. A race of sorts across the wildest parts of the 49th state, the Classic each year attracts only a handful of participants, nearly all of them Alaskans familiar with the dangers of frigid waters, unforgiving climate and grizzly bears. There is no race route, and part of the challenge is finding the best way to the finish line.

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The Classic community is small -- numbering fewer than 500 people -- but it represents the most experienced wilderness trekkers in Alaska. Kehrer was one of this group, a man perhaps more comfortable in the wilderness than the city. For many winters, Kehrer helped Bill Merchant of the Iditarod Trail Invitational pioneer the Iditarod Trail to the remote Rohn checkpoint in the Alaska Range every February.

The two men would punch the trail through Rainy Pass and down into the rugged Dalzell Gorge before Iditarod race officials, let alone Iditarod mushers, arrived. Then Kehrer would hang out in Rohn to man the checkpoint for the Invitational. Invitational competitors came to know him as the always-smiling guy who kept the checkpoint wall tent warm, made comfortable places for everyone to sleep, and kept stuffing people with food.

"Everybody who describes him talks about his big heart," Mehl said. "He really embodied the spirit of Alaska."

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