I had kept hold of the end of the rope and tied it to a large rock nearby in case Ben needed me to swing him toward the ledge where he could walk off without risking a swim in the choppy pool at the base of the falls. Just in case. Stack whatever odds you can in your favor.  Look before you leap, but by all means - leap!

High above, Ben was nothing but a tiny speck making his way down the cliff, pausing for long moments now and then at each knot. When clouds covered the sun and a breeze began to stir, I put my damp shirt back on and huddled next to the rock for warmth. Ben finally reached the last knot, only twenty feet from the ledge and safety.

I watched as he seemed to struggle for some time. He finally spun himself toward me and shouted.  It turns out that that the gear he had brought to relieve his weight on the rope in order to move past the knots did not work. It was a simple procedure that required the rope to bend, but the combined weight of five wet, heavy ropes would allow no bending. He could connect below each knot, but was unable to remove his figure eight from the rope above.

What saved Ben’s life was that he brought five rappel devices, and had left one at each knot. At the last knot, dangling under a gentle overhang, he could not lift himself enough to unattach from the second-to-last rope. He was stuck. And then things suddenly got bad.

A dark cloud covered the sun and the wind came rushing up the valley.  In a matter of seconds, the now eighty-foot-wide river shifted sixty feet to the north, crashing straight down against Ben’s helmeted head.

"Shaun, get me out of here!" I heard him shout from inside the waterfall, his voice nearly drowned by the thunder of the river impacting the cliff. I ran down hill to the rock where I had tied the end of the rope and pulled frantically, feeling like a lifeguard hauling in a man overboard in a squall.

Soon Ben dangled in space, just clear of the falling river. It was suddenly painfully apparent why the rock below Ben's feet were stripped of all vegetation but the thin moss. This was not an uncommon occurance. Soon the cloud passed and the wind lessened, however, and the falls shifted back to the south where it belonged. We had regained square one. Ben still had no way to escape and rappel to safety.

I unclipped an ascender from my harness, then fastened it the rope in my hand, then instructed Ben to pull it up to himself. I untied the rope from the rock, leaving a tiny knot in the very end, and leaned as far as I could over the mossy cliff toward him, but even with the rope pulled tightly between us, the ascender hung a mere foot or two out of reach.

I could have let go of the rope end.  Then Ben could have reached the ascender.  But I didn't dare.  The rope end still might come in handy. Besides, dangerous times like this often bring on poor judgement. Poor judgement at a time like this could prove fatal. I didn't want to do anything rash without first looking for better options, and my wise judgement was quickly proven.

Another cloud covered the sun.  The afternoon rains were approaching. The wind gusted up the valley and this time I pulled Ben free of the water before the full force reached him. Then I pulled even harder, adding my weight to the rope’s load, stretching it and allowing me to slide the ascender a few feet closer to Ben’s fingertips. Then we waited.  What we did not know was that Ben had let the rope fall across a sharp point of rock a thousand feet above his head. The stretching back and forth, along with my additional weight now on the rope, had begun to cut through the tough outer sheath. What could we have done had we known? Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

After the wind died down again, Ben was able to reach the ascender, free himself from his 2nd to last ATC, and quickly rappel the final twenty feet to the narrow ledge. He made his way along the base of the cliff until he reached the rock where I had left my gear to dry. He shivered violently and had a slightly glazed look in his eyes. Hypothermia had set in from the deadly combination of water and wind.

"Sit here," I told him, indicating the leeward side of a large rock. I then sat on his lap and wrapped an arm around his shoulders to help him raise his core temperature to a safer level. Soon the shivering slowed and he seemed more coherent. I loaded my gear back into my pack and we both headed along a faint trail leading down canyon.

A long hike back to the top awaited us, but first we would have find a way to cross the river. After hiking along the shore for twenty minutes, searching for a safe crossing, we gave up.  Instead, we simply chose the largest pool we could find between small waterfalls.

I waded out into the river, stepping carefully across the fine gravel beneath my feet. It reminded me of the pool below the falls. When the bottom dropped out, I knew what to do and doggie paddled as hard and fast as I could.

In the middle of the pool, the swift current caught hold and swept me quickly downstream toward the next ten-foot waterfall. I reached the far side fifteen feet before it swept me over. Ben followed me across, and we began making our way up the steep, slippery mountainside to the trail I knew we would find somewhere above.

When the sun finally set, we had found the trail and regained the top of the falls.  We were still wet and starving. Ben tied himself to the fence we had anchored off and leaned out over the top of the cliff to help pull up the heavy, wet ropes. We ran the rope through my remaining ascender which we tied to the fence which protected our progress and let us rest between heaves and hos.  I stood behind the fence and counted a working rhythm, "One, two...one, two." We stripped Ben's rappel devices and my ascender off as they came up over the cliff edge.

Ben picked up the heaviest pack full of soaked ropes and started up the trail in utter darkness.  I walked behind him and watched his white socks to show me the way without expending the energy to look up at the sky to get my bearings.   The two miles back to the car eventually passed and the ordeal finally ended when we sat down at a table outside a dark restaurant next to the car and broke out the last of our food, which tasted as good as anything I could remember.

In my mind, I reviewed everything that went wrong or could have gone wrong today. When we pulled the ropes up, we found that the sharp edge at the top of the cliff had indeed cut part way through the rope sheath. Another half hour on the ropes could have sawed through the exposed core. If Ben had brought any fewer rappel devices, he could have been trapped somewhere midway down the cliff. If Ben had gone first without ascenders, he might have had no way past the last knot. If I hadn’t kept hold of the rope after I reached the bottom safely, he’d have hung under the falls long enough that hypothermia could have made him unable to act coherently and escape. If the river had been any swifter, it might have swept us helplessly over the next waterfall. So many things could have gone wrong. We could have died in so many ways. What had induced me to act so carelessly?

"Man, we’re dang lucky everything went so well today, don’t ya think?" Ben asked as he finished devouring his second peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

"Absolutely," I agreed, changing my perspective instantly.