Paddleboarder says jet ski hit at Bear Lake, family fears drowning

Rachel Wamsley was paddleboarding on Bear Lake when she says a jet ski hit her and sent her into the water, turning a quiet evening on the lake into a frightening scramble back to shore. She was about 100 yards out, far enough that she could not touch bottom, when she noticed the motorized craft in the distance and then found herself in the water.

Wamsley came away bruised, with a black eye, sore ribs, and injuries to her hips and arms. Doctors believed she had a concussion. After the impact, she had to swim to recover her paddleboard before heading back to shore, a detail her father said made the injury look like more than a simple fall. The family said the deepest fear was not just the collision itself, but what could have happened if the hit had been harder or if she had lost consciousness away from land.

The episode lands in the middle of one of the West’s busiest mixed-use water playgrounds. Bear Lake is the kind of place where people play, fish, boat, and camp, and Idaho Parks and Recreation says Bear Lake State Park welcomes about 15,000 campers annually. Utah State Parks also notes that local operators rent jet skis, boats, and other watercraft, including Sea-Doos, ski and wakeboard boats, jet skis, and fishing boats, which puts motorized traffic close to paddleboards, swimmers, and anglers on busy summer days.

Utah’s boating guidance is blunt about the stakes: every vessel must carry at least one properly sized, U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jacket for each person aboard, and the state says 80% of people who drowned in boating accidents nationally would have survived had they been wearing one. The Utah boating program, which has operated since 1959, also requires accident reports within 10 days if someone dies, disappears, is injured beyond first aid, or property damage tops $2,000. That framework matters at Bear Lake, where a split-second mistake can turn a lake day into a rescue call.

The scare also echoes a fatal Bear Lake paddleboarding incident reported the week before, when a 17-year-old Arizona boy died after falling off his board near Ideal Beach without a life jacket. Wamsley’s close call, bruises and all, is another hard reminder that calm water can still hide real danger when boats and boards share the same stretch of lake.