Montana man recounts Two Bear Air rescue after 100-foot fall

MISSOULA, Mont. — Six months after a bone-breaking 100-foot drop off the edge of a waterfall, 25-year-old Ryan Anderson is giving play-by-play as he watches video of his rescue for the first time.

“Where I’d fallen off was right here. And I landed somewhere down here," he said.

“They are hoisting me up right now,” Anderson said, pointing at the computer screen in the living room of his Missoula apartment.

The video was shot by cameras attached to one of the most technically advanced rescue helicopters in the world -- Two Bear Air’s hoist-equipped Bell 429. It’s the only non-military helicopter in the entire state that could make a high-angle cliff rescue like the one Anderson was once the subject of.

A helicopter got to him just in the nick of time.

The day of Anderson’s rescue started that July morning with a hike with his friends, sister and mom’s dog, Lily, up to Mission Falls, a large waterfall in the mountains above St. Ignatius.

“I was there last year, and I decided that I wanted a nice hike before I had to go to work that evening.”

After a 3-mile hike up, he reached a pool of water above the falls, and watched with surprise as Lily jumped in.

“I yelled at her, and she immediately turned around and I could tell she was trying,” he said.

Anderson remembers watching the dog slowly getting sucked into the current, toward the edge of the falls.

“I didn’t hesitate, I just ran,” he remembered.

Anderson says he stuck one foot into the water and tried reaching for the dog, but she was just inches away from his fingertips. He stuck his second foot in the water.

“When I did that, I slipped in as well, and then my concern was trying to get out,” Anderson recalls. “I just remember looking at my friends, and they were there, reaching for me, trying to grab me. It was when I fell back,” he said.

He went backwards, over the falls.

“As soon as I went off I knew this is not going to be good. I kind of accepted the fact that this is probably it,” Anderson said.

But that wasn’t it. Anderson regained consciousness in the arms of a friend who scrambled down to the rocks below and pulled him from the water.

“I could see that my leg was broken and my elbow was, but I was more in shock that I was kind of OK, which felt very weird,” he said.

The problem now was getting help. As they contemplated a difficult and dangerous hike carrying Anderson down the trail, a friend was able to get cell service and call 911. And that’s when Two Bear Air got the call.

Anderson remembers hearing the whir of the helicopter in the distance.

“I felt relieved. It was very uplifting,” he recalled.

With Two Bear’s chopper hovering above the falls, a rescue specialist was sent down to give Anderson stabilizing medical treatment before attaching him to the hoist and lifting him to safety.

Six months later, he’s still recovering.

“I compound fractured my tibia and then shattered that and also broke my fibula.”

And his family still feels the sting of losing Lily, his mom’s dog.

“That was the first thing I said to (my mom). ‘I tried,’” he said.

Anderson said he knows he could have lost a lot more that day, and he says he’s thankful for the quick actions of his friends and the quick response of Two Bear.

“I feel like I had some guardian angels looking out for me,” Anderson said.

Two Bear Air is a privately funded search and rescue organization. To read and watch NBC Montana’s profile of Two Bear, click here.