While we were standing on the footbridge a man showed up with several teenage boys. The man went to a lower platform and appeared to be filming the boys as they got ready to jump into the river. This is a common practice at the falls. There are two pools of water. The first one is where the river drops into the pool and literally looks like a whirlpool, filled with foamy water. This is not a recommended place to swim in any condition, especially when the river is flowing high like it was yesterday. The pool connects to another pool that is generally crystal clear and about 15 feet deep. The water is also a mineral green color which makes it that much more attractive to the dare devils.
On this day there was no one swimming as the water was high, at least to me, because you could not see the bottom of that second pool, the waterfall was extremely loud which was a 2nd indicator that one should not swim here on that day.
I should note that I have always seen people jump into this pool feet first as it is probably the safest way to jump.
2 of the 3 boys jumped into the river and did OK. They came back around to the top of the rocks and were standing there discussing things. The father (my guess as to who he was) went back to the rock platform and looked like he was going to video them jumping again. The skinnier of the 2 boys looked ready to jump in again. My immediate thought was that he should not do it again, after all why try your luck. Apparently my brainwaves did not catch his and before my eyes he was doing a forward flip off the rocks and head to the water. There is where it went wrong for him. He did a 1 and 1/2 flip which meant that he had now just done a belly flop from 25-30 feet above. He did not surface correctly and appeared to be winded. His brother jumped in and helped keep his brothers head above water as he looked to have knocked the wind out of himself.
One of the ladies in my group was a retired nurse and she grew concerned about the well being of this child. She went down to where they came out of the water and said that the boy seemed groggy. The father assured her that he would take him to the emergency room. It did not seem to be a good situation but she felt good inside to have checked and offered to assist the father if needed.
When we left the waterfall, the boys and their father were still down below, but refused an offer to call for help stating that the boy just needed to rest. When we returned to the Route 302, we waited for the Twin Mountain Ambulance and Police to turn onto the road. I guess that someone else decided that the boy needed help.
My moral to his story is please be careful. Jump in Feet First only. We are lucky that we did not witness something worse.
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