Expert Kayaker Drowns on Great Falls Run

Expert kayaker Will Lankford, 22, drowned May 3 running the Virginia side of Great Falls after a rescue by two others got him to shore within minutes but CPR attempts failed.

The accident was just below the Spout waterfall, with the river flowing at 3.2 feet on the Little Falls gage. Having run the drop, Lankford was forced into the rock wall at the lower end of the formation known as the Flake and was pinned. The American Whitewater Accident Database has details provided by the two friends who attempted to save him. All three, his friends said, had paddled Great Falls many times.

An accident at the same location about two years ago, which ended in a successful rescue, was recorded in a video that has been added to the AW account to illustrate how dangerous the spot can be even when a paddler has navigated the waterfall itself.

An account in a Substack newsletter describes William Lankford's youth on Capitol Hill and then Lynchburg, Virginia. He graduated with distinction from the University of Virginia in 2025 with a B.A. in mathematics and economics and a concentration in finance, joined the accounting firm BDO as a tax associate, and was on the path to licensure as a CPA. Interests ran from baseball as a boy to wrestling in high school, to work as a rafting guide during his college summers, to serving as a kayaking instructor at UVA.