Stephen Forster was at home on wild water.

The 19-year-old from Connecticut got into kayaking more than a decade ago. He spent his last two years of high school at New River Academy — a traveling high school where kayaking is the school sport, and the students kayak every day, according to his blogs and his hometown paper, The Wilton Bulletin.

Forster was an expert paddler who had negotiated wild water all over the United States and in other countries, including Chile. His last kayaking trip was on the Payette River June 28, when the river was running at more than 4,000 cubic feet per second.

He and a friend, Boise paddler Brian Ward, put in at the top of the Disneyland rapid, which is near the top of a series of Class V rapids, south of Smiths Ferry.

Things went terribly wrong that morning when he got caught in a hydraulic, or hole, near the Nowhere to Run rapid. A hydraulic occurs when water flows over rocks, then flows back upstream.

Forster swam his way out of the hole, but then was swept downstream. Ward tried to reach him in the fast-moving water.

“I caught up with Stephen just before Chaos (rapid) and tried to get him on the stern of my boat, but the water was too swift,” the 28-year-old said in an online blog in tribute to his friend.

Ward eventually lost sight of Forster in the water. Saturday morning — more than two weeks after Forster went missing — his body was found by a kayaker about 7 miles downstream from where he disappeared, Boise County Coroner Pam Garlock confirmed Monday.

Earlier the same day Forster was found, Ward joined Forster’s family and friends at a funeral service in his hometown of Wilton, Conn.

Reached by phone Monday, Ward said he’d been in Connecticut more than a week. He didn’t want to discuss Forster’s death.

“We’re kind of getting past that and moving toward who he was and what he was about,” he said.

Ward first met Forster at Eagle Creek in Oregon earlier this year. Forster and his friends were headed to paddle several falls, including Metlako Falls, which has a more than 80-foot drop, Ward said in his blog.

He later met up with Forster in Virginia, while on a trip during the promotion tour for the film “WildWater, A Love Story.” Ward invited Forster to come paddle the Payette, and a few months later he was in Idaho.

Forster’s father, Bob Forster, told The Wilton Bulletin that Forster planned to spend the summer kayaking in Colorado, Idaho, Oregon and California.

Bob Forster told The Wilton Bulletin that kayaking wasn’t just his son’s passion, “It was his life.”

Katy Moeller: 377-6413