PARK COUNTY — A couple's float trip on a river near Cody, Wyoming, turned dangerous after their boat struck electric wires stretched from bank to bank across the South Fork of the Shoshone River. The incident has raised questions about the legality of fencing across rivers in Wyoming and Montana.
Ryan Aune owns Wyoming Wings and Waters and is a seasoned river guide doing tours nearly every day of the summer.
Watch Ryan Aune talk about the situation:
He set out with his girlfriend and her 9-year-old son for a casual float trip Sunday.
"I knew we weren't going to fish. But I still got the boat ready and was like, 'Let's just go for a float for the day,'" Aune, who lives in Cody, said Thursday. "It was their first time doing kind of (this) adventure."
The mood was light until the group rounded a bend and spotted something stretched across the river.
"Just hit a bend in the river and just looked up and we were like, 'What's that across the river?'" Aune said.
It was an electric wire.
"It would have hit the boat level. And so there was no going under it or over it mid-river," Aune said.
With the current moving fast, the group had little time to react.
"This is all happening like fast, like seconds, because the river's moving so fast that we have seconds to think," Aune said.
Then a second wire appeared.
"The strength of how sturdy they had the wire into the ground, tried to keep us there. And so the current literally drug us where the boat started tipping up and then to the side and we started flipping," Aune said.
No one was hurt, and the boat was okay.
Monte McLain with the Park County Sheriff's Office said there was no criminal or malicious intent behind the wires.
In a statement, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department said, "There are no applicable Game and Fish statutes or regulations related to a landowner obstructing or interfering with the passage of watercraft in the state’s waters. Game and Fish actively promotes access for recreational fishing and hunting and in these situations, can be involved in facilitating solutions that meet the needs of both private landowners and recreationists in order to maintain access for the public."
The situation is similar in Montana.
"There's no law in the book saying that it's illegal to fence across a river," said Carter Morley with the Public Land Water Access Association.
Morley said these types of obstacles are not uncommon.
"We see fences across rivers all the time. Heck, in the Bitterroot Valley, you know, there is one stretch of river that had a dozen fences out at one point," Morley said.
While fencing across waterways is legal, McLain said the ranch involved in the incident plans to change how it fences off the river to prevent similar situations in the future. Aune said he is grateful for that response.
"I am really grateful that they saw that it was a dangerous situation and they took steps immediately to remove it. And that they do support recreation on this river and that they're gonna look into different ways to remove the fence," Aune said.
