A 35-year-old man died Saturday afternoon after jumping into the plunge pool at Twisting Falls in Carter County, Tennessee, and getting pulled under by the waterfall's powerful undertow. A member of his group managed to retrieve him from the water and began CPR, but he was pronounced dead at the scene. His identity has not been released.
According to the Carter County Tennessee Sheriff's Office, deputies responded to a report of a possible drowning at Twisting Falls on Saturday afternoon. The sheriff's office says the man jumped from the falls, became caught in the undertow, and was pulled beneath the surface before someone in his group pulled him free and started CPR. The Carter County Rescue Squad and other local agencies also responded and assisted at the scene.
Per WJHL, emergency crews remained on scene at Twisting Falls for nearly nine hours before the operation concluded with the man's death confirmed. The extended timeline reflects both the remoteness of the site and the difficulty of any rescue effort in that gorge.
A Remote, Unmaintained Path to a Dangerous Pool
Twisting Falls, also called Compression Falls or Poga Falls by locals, sits along the Elk River in the Poga and Elk Mills area of Carter County, within the Watauga Lake Zone of Cherokee National Forest near the North Carolina border, as detailed by Elizabethton Star. Reaching the falls requires descending an unofficial, unmaintained trail that drops more than 400 vertical feet to the river gorge in less than half a mile, with slopes near 45 degrees, loose rock, and ropes tied to trees to help hikers scramble down, according to a trail report from Appalachian Treks.
The waterfall itself drops 30 to 35 feet into a deep plunge pool bordered by steep cliffs, where falling water creates strong recirculating undertows and hydraulic forces, the Hidden Swimming Holes team notes. Those hydraulics can trap even strong swimmers underwater regardless of their physical ability, according to public health guidance cited by White River Family Practice.
A History of Fatal and Near-Fatal Accidents
Saturday's death is not the first at Twisting Falls. In July 2018, 25-year-old Keith Massey of St. Louis, Missouri, drowned there after jumping from the top of the falls into the plunge pool and being dragged under by the current, the Elizabethton Star reported at the time. Recovering his body required the Carter County Rescue Squad's Technical Rescue Team to deploy dive teams and work for eight hours in the gorge.
Non-fatal accidents have also plagued the site. In June 2009, a woman suffered a broken back, a broken arm, a shattered heel, and head injuries at Twisting Falls, requiring a four-hour extraction by the Carter County Rescue Squad, according to the Appalachian Treks account of the incident.
Part of what makes emergencies at Twisting Falls so slow to resolve is the terrain itself: the area has no cellular phone service and no official government trail maintenance, which has sometimes forced witnesses to hike out or route emergency calls through neighboring Avery County, North Carolina, dispatch before Carter County crews are even notified, per Hidden Swimming Holes. Just upstream across the state line, Elk River Falls in Pisgah National Forest is considered one of the Southeast's deadliest waterfalls, averaging roughly one drowning death a year from cliff jumping and hydraulic undertows, according to a regional comparison shared on Facebook.
