Boy rescued after hours on rock

Associated Press

SEATTLE

Swept down one waterfall and about to plunge over a much larger one, a 13-year-old boy managed to climb onto a 1-foot-wide rock shelf in a gushing Washington state river — and then stayed there for eight and a half hours until rescuers finally saved him early Sunday, sheriff’s officials said.

The boy was out hiking with his father and his father’s friend about 5 p.m. Saturday, when he began wading in the river above Wallace Falls, at a popular state park near Gold Bar, 45 miles northeast of Seattle in the Cascade foothills. The top of the falls is a steep, nearly 3-mile hike from the trailhead.

The boy slipped on some rocks, and the water carried him down a 10-foot waterfall. Somehow, just before he would have fallen over the 270-foot main attraction, he pulled himself out of the whitewater and onto a narrow, sloping shelf the water had carved in a rock wall.

With his back to the wall, he crouched and waited for help, his toes in the water.

Rescuers first tried to reach him by helicopter, but the rock overhanging the shelf prevented them from dropping straight down. Instead, a helicopter crew dropped two rescuers 200 yards below him.

The rescuers climbed above the rock overhang, and then worked as a team — one rappelling down, the other belaying.

Other rescuers hiked up the trail, and arrived to find the boy standing on the rock, wet and hypothermic. They threw him dry clothes and food and set up a rigging that would allow them to rescue him, including a 24-foot aluminum ladder placed horizontally across the river and secured with several ropes.