THE 18-year-old reel of film tells the story: A small figure standing on a cliff 100 feet above Lake Powell, a small figure falling through the air, a body hitting the water, and then a blurred section of footage as the cameraman realizes that his friend must be drowning.
"It's kind of foggy but I remember being under the water and seeing these bubbles around me," recalls Dr. Michael Anderson, now an orthopedic surgeon in St. George. "I felt a sharp pain in my chest. I must have had the wind knocked out of me and I couldn't move. I remember thinking I might not come up again."Anderson was 17 years old when he first appreciated how deadly the combination of gravity, acceleration and water can be. On vacation at Lake Powell with friends, he had been excited to try some cliff diving. Fortunately a buddy was nearby in a canoe recording the event with a movie camera and saved him.
"You play for keeps when you cliff dive," says Anderson, who recently addressed a group of paramedics at Bullfrog Marina on the inherent dangers of the sport.
But paramedics, and park rangers at the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, are powerless to stop people from jumping or diving off the cliffs into the inviting water below.
Just a week after Anderson addressed the paramedics, a University of Utah senior died when he dove nearly 80 feet into the lake and never resurfaced.
Troy Nelson, 22, was an experienced diver and a member of the Salt Lake Country Club diving team. Friends describe him as "responsible, not the show-off type." But experience, skill and good intentions are not always a match for Lake Powell.
Nelson and three friends, part of an annual Memorial weekend fraternity houseboat trip, had climbed up on a set of towering rocks on Saturday morning, May 28. Nelson's girlfriend, Tina Gustin, jumped first, from about 60 feet, and had yelled up to him that her dive had knocked the wind out of her.
Nelson dove next - a graceful back flip. He never surfaced. It took expert divers several days to locate his body, which was 120 feet below the surface on an underwater ledge. An autopsy showed he had suffered a broken neck.
According to John Benjamin, fire and loss control manager for the National Park Service at Glen Canyon, this is the third cliff-jump fatality in the past eight years. In that time, he says, at least seven more people have been permanently paralyzed.
"You're taking a chance no matter where you do the dive," says Benjamin. "There's no guarantee, ever, and there are so many variables."
The risks are greater with increased heights, he says, because of the greater force and the greater resistance of the water. A person diving from 5 feet is traveling 12 mph when he hits the water; a person diving from 85 feet is traveling 50 mph.
But even shallow dives can end up in death or permanent injury. Last year a man was left a quadriplegic after diving just 5 feet off a houseboat into the murky lake.
In this case it was a shallow, sandy bottom that broke his neck. Sometimes the danger is a rocky spire. Lake Powell, after all, was created by damming a former canyon.
Benjamin offers these rules for divers and jumpers:
-Be sure you know what's under the water's surface.
-The greater the height, the greater the risk.
-Jumping is safer than diving.
But even jumping can be dangerous, especially from great heights, as Anderson learned when he was 17.
"That's the scary thing - that something as simple as having the wind knocked out of you could result in your death," he notes. "You don't realize it until it happens, and then it's too late."
When Anderson was going through his orthopedic training at the University of Utah Medical Center, he treated several severe injuries from cliff diving. What struck him was that "everybody acted so shocked that it happened to them."
In addition to the dangers of jumping off them, Lake Powell's cliffs also provide other risks. Just this past Tuesday an Idaho man fell to his death while climbing up the loose rock. Last year another hiker died after falling 50 feet off slick rock.
"Every place you turn there's a place that is gorgeous and fascinating to explore," notes Benjamin. "You start climbing up the ledges, and you keep thinking you're at the top, and then you come to a new ledge. You're driven to keep going. But it's much easier to climb up than it is to climb down."
With 200 miles of lake and 1,900 miles of shoreline, Park Service rangers do not have the manpower to patrol the whole area, nor could they put up warning signs on every cliff. They do hand out brochures that include warnings about the dangers of cliff hiking and jumping.
But the Park Service can't make people read them or heed them.