A 34-year-old Granite Falls man who jumped into Banks Lake near Northrup Point on July 30 and never resurfaced has been found, after search crews spent nearly two weeks combing the reservoir before locating his body in roughly 130 feet of water using a submersible robot. Brandon Belcher was boating with a group of friends near the popular access point, a few miles south of Electric City, when he went into the water and failed to come back up.
The incident happened about 1,500 feet from shore along State Route 155, according to News Radio 560 KPQ. The Grant County Sheriff's Office led an extensive search for Belcher that stretched on for days, eventually calling in help from the Kittitas County Sheriff's Office and the Pierce County Sheriff's Office. It was the King County Sheriff's Office, however, that provided the piece of equipment that ultimately located Belcher's remains: a submersible robot capable of reaching depths well beyond what human divers can safely attempt.
Why a Robot Was Needed to Find Him
Banks Lake's extreme depth was the central obstacle facing search crews from the start. The 27-mile-long artificial reservoir spans nearly 27,000 acres across Grant and Douglas counties and reaches a maximum depth of 177 feet, with an average depth of 46 feet, according to Wikipedia. Grant County authorities noted that the lake lacks natural water currents beyond wind-driven movement and irrigation pumping, meaning a submerged body typically stays near where it entered the water but remains extremely difficult to locate given the depth involved, per 870 AM KFLD.
Remote operated vehicles like the one deployed in Belcher's case rely on side-scan sonar and robotic arms to search lake beds and retrieve victims at depths exceeding 100 feet, where divers face serious physical risk, according to a Facebook post from the King County Sheriff's Office. Rural counties like Grant often depend on interagency partnerships with larger metropolitan sheriff's offices for this kind of deep-water technology, since smaller departments typically don't maintain their own ROV units. The search itself reportedly included grueling 11-hour dive sessions on August 3, part of a recovery effort that stretched nearly two weeks before Belcher's body was found on August 12.
Autopsy Pending as Coroner Reviews Cause of Death
Belcher's body is now with the Grant County Coroner's Office, which is expected to conduct an autopsy this week to determine his exact cause and manner of death. Kyle Foreman said the death is likely to have been an accidental drowning, though that determination has not yet been finalized. Belcher was believed to have drowned in the lake after entering the water near Northrup Point, a 24-hour public boat launch and day-use area off State Route 155 within Steamboat Rock State Park, roughly seven miles south of Grand Coulee, according to Washington State Parks.
It is not the first time Banks Lake has claimed a life near the same stretch of shoreline. In May 2018, a 17-year-old boy drowned in the lake near Steamboat Rock State Park after falling off a flotation device and failing to resurface, an incident that likewise triggered an overnight dive search requiring specialized assistance, this time from the Spokane County Sheriff's Office, according to The Star.
A Reservoir Built for Irrigation, Now a Recreation Draw
Banks Lake was created by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation as part of the Columbia Basin Project, engineered by pumping water 280 feet up from Lake Roosevelt behind Grand Coulee Dam into the Grand Coulee canyon, per Wikipedia. Two earth-fill dams hold back the water, which is stored primarily for regional irrigation but also draws boaters and paddlers to spots like Northrup Point throughout the summer.
Federal data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that nearly 80 percent of unintentional drowning victims nationwide are male, a disparity public health experts attribute to higher rates of water exposure and recreational risk-taking among men. Washington law requires every vessel to carry at least one Coast Guard-approved personal flotation device per passenger, though adults on open decks are not legally required to wear one while underway, according to the Washington State Parks boater safety guidance. It remains unknown whether Belcher was wearing a life jacket at the time he entered the water, and that detail has not been addressed in official accounts of the incident.
