I had been living on the Hawaiian island of Maui for about a year, working as a dive instructor, when friends from the mainland US came to visit last summer: Renee and her boyfriend Jason, Noah, Sarah and AJ, all keen to have some adventures. We spent a week exploring another island, but there was a spot closer to home I wanted to show them – a serene 30-foot waterfall with a beautiful dive pool beneath it. I’d been once before and thought it would be a perfect place to spend the day.
There was a walk of about two miles from the road upstream to the falls, along a path known as the Commando Hike. About halfway there, a light rain began. The area is notorious for flash floods during the rainy season and we’d been hearing warnings all week, but the shower was so gentle I thought nothing of it; by the time we reached our destination it had already stopped. We had to wade up the stream to reach the swimming hole, in water that was no more than knee-deep.
On my last visit, I’d jumped in from a ledge halfway up, to the side of the falling water. AJ was keen to try it and we stripped to our swimming shorts. Renee is a film-maker and Jason a photographer, and as AJ and I climbed the cliff face, Renee set up a drone with a camera to shoot some video, while Jason took pictures from a beach-like area facing the waterfall. Noah and Sarah cooled off in the pool.
I climbed to the top of the waterfall and waded across to a rock in the middle, right near the edge. I was standing there, messing around while Jason took pictures, when I saw AJ on the ledge below, signalling that he was about to jump. I had no intention of leaping from where I was – there was a danger I wouldn’t clear the face of the waterfall and there were too many rocks right below. But when I stepped back into the stream, I plunged in up to my waist.
Moments before it had been knee-deep and the pull had been gentle – now I felt myself being dragged to the lip of the waterfall. Leaning forward, I grabbed for rocks, trying to gain stability as I edged towards the bank. But the water just kept rising. I found another big rock and latched on to it like a limpet, blinded by panic but clinging on even as the water rose up to my shoulders, then chin. As it covered my face, the pull became irresistible and I was ripped off the rock into the brown-black surge. I remember feeling in freefall, and a jolting impact as my heel bounced off something hard. Then I was fully submerged, spinning and cartwheeling. My training as a diver was no use here – I’d experienced nothing like this in the ocean.
I tried to strike for the surface but had no idea which way I was pointing. I wondered if I was being drawn towards a larger waterfall a hundred yards downstream, but when my head broke the surface, I saw the current had spat me out by the beach; the force had been so great that I’d cleared the cliff face and the rocks completely, with only my foot clipping the ledge as I fell. The others had already scrambled on to the beach to escape the flood, but as the water continued to rise, we realised we were standing on a fast-shrinking island. There was no way back, but we managed to reach the opposite bank, wading in water up to our chests, or using vines and overhanging branches to haul ourselves across. Looking back, we saw the island we’d been standing on had completely disappeared.
I learned later that until I appeared on the beach, everyone had assumed I’d drowned. I got to see how close a call I’d had, too; Renee managed to retrieve her drone and seeing the footage underlined how lucky we’d been to escape with our lives. Other than my throbbing foot, we were completely unharmed.
As we climbed, we ran into another stranded hiker who called 911. We were told to wait for a helicopter, which had to retrieve other people farther downstream first. We’d been lucky – the rescue team told us they often had to recover bodies. In flood season, rainwater can collect in the mountains, overflow and funnel down all at once. I was stupid to ignore the warnings; I’ll pay more heed to local knowledge in future.
• As told to Chris Broughton
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