We arrived at Big Splat 4/14 just before 1:00. Jeff and Jason Black had passed us at Zoom Flume and appeared to be paddling well.  As I pulled out to walk the right side of Big Splat Jeff's son came up crying and said his father had swam the waterfall and not come out the bottom.  He told me that he watched his father flip in the pool above the falls exit his boat and land in the river right side of the drop. His boat had bounced off the drop and continued downstream and after a short period his helmet had exited the pool and continued downstream.  We saw the skirt and paddle pop out of the hole and head to the left into the ricirculating eddy.

I alerted our group of 8 as to the problem. One of us went up to the put-in and drove up to alert the authorities.  I think he went to Glenn Miller's house. Two of us stayed as lookouts from above. One went down to help Jason and his wife throw ropes into the maw on the right.  The rest went down below the drop with ropes in case the rescuers or Jeff went into the water.  Ed and I went to the river left side where we had seen the paddle and skirt, retrieved the equipment and placed it in Jason's boat.  We then waded and took our boats into that eddy to see if we could see anything.  After 45 minutes of using ropes, paddles, and tree pieces there was nothing else to be done.  We pulled Jason's boat and equipment over to the right shore.  From the fracture on the paddle I was guessing that he had broken his paddle and may have missed his roles because of that.  I don't know. We said goodbye to the group on the rock and I expected that authorities would be there soon.

JB (rescuer) caught up with us just downstream and I relayed what we did, what I thought had happened. He paddled back up to continue the rescue.  Ken found his boat and helmet just downstream.  He indicated that there was a big knock on the right temple area of the helmet.

This was a terrible tragedy.  I don't know if our group handled it right but we did the best we could.  It was probably too late to begin with if he had hit his head initially on the drop.  My concern was also the safety of the rescuers.  I won't forget this anytime soon.