The death count on Colorado’s swollen rivers and creeks continued to climb on Sunday as Denver police recovered a body from the South Platte River.
The body was pulled from the river near the 900 block of South Platte River Drive, police tweeted at about 9 a.m.
The Platte River drowning followed an incident Saturday on Clear Creek where a 20-year-old man on a rafting trip drowned.
The man was pulled from the river about a mile from the western edge of Clear Creek Canyon along U.S. 6.
The names have not been released for either the South Platte River drowning victim or the Clear Creek victim.
At least 12 people have died this year in Colorado’s rivers and streams, which have been running high due to snowmelt and a spring of heavy rain.
Nine of the fatalities resulted from boating accidents over the past two months, said Matt Robbins, spokesman for the Colorado Department of Parks and Wildlife.
All of those accidents happened in swift running water, Robbins said.
At the time of Saturday’s drowning, Clear Creek was running at 303 cubic feet per second, which is 130 percent of its normal median flow, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The state’s record for boating fatalities was set in 2006 when 17 people died, Robbins said. The record was tied last year, when 17 died in boating accidents.
The body of 44-year-old George “Robby” Loving was recovered from a lake outside the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs on June 27 after witnesses saw someone trying to swim across the lake, according to police.
The body recovered Sunday is the second found in the South Platte.
Joseph Goodwin, 20, was found June 28, after he fell off his inner tube and into the river in Sheridan on June 20.
Cody Pierce, 19, of Albuquerque drowned in the high-running Animas River in late June.
An intoxicated 55-year-old Federal Heights man died Friday after he fell from his camp chair, hit his head on his RV, tumbled down an embankment and landed facedown in the Big Thompson River.
David Lee Howard drowned within minutes in shallow water, according to Greg Fairman, Larimer County deputy coroner and investigator.
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671, tmcghee@denverpost.com or twitter.com/dpmcghee
