The water-soaked dirt is soft under his feet. He creeps closer to the edge, gazing at the view. Suddenly, the ground collapses beneath his feet, pulling him down.

50 feet.

100 feet.

200 feet.

He lands. Blood covers his face, but he’s breathing.

Seniors Bella Barnett and Arinn Wall were volunteers at a retreat at Hidden Falls Ranch Sept. 20 when a 13-year-old boy fell 60 feet, then rolled and fell another 25 feet off a cliff.

“We were all in the kitchen doing dishes, and the youth leader ran in and said a kid had fallen off the cliff,” Wall said. “It didn’t really register, but then several people ran outside so I followed, and I saw the boy at the bottom. It all felt very unreal, but everybody snapped into action and was able to work well in that tough situation.”

Barnett said she helped lead the paramedics to where the boy had fallen before pulling him up the trail close to where he had fallen.

“Some guys from the emergency team threw up a rope and I tied it around a boulder,” Barnett said. “We had the kid in a Stokes basket, and we made a pulley system out of the rope and pulled him all the way up. When he got there, we all assisted in getting him out of the Stokes basket, putting him on a backboard, lifting the backboard into the stretcher, securing his head and sending him off in the ambulance.”

Wall said she ran and got supplies to lower down to the boy, including ropes from the rappelling tower and lanterns because it was getting dark.

“After a while, I went back inside dining hall with the youth group and comforted them,” Wall said. “A lot of them were panicking, so I was just trying to help comfort them. I just started singing for no reason, and they all started singing. We sang for a long time and prayed together.”

The boy sustained injuries that included a broken ankle, three fractures in his spine, a broken nose and several facial lacerations.

“A couple minutes after we had prayed for him, one of the directors radioed one of the ladies in the dining hall that the boy only had minor injuries,” Wall said. “At that time, they didn’t know how bad it was, so it was such a relief to know that he was okay.”

Wall said that it was supposed to be raining at the camp that night.

“Ten miles down the road it was probably pouring,” Wall said. “I was waiting to meet the fire trucks and I looked at the radar, there was rain in Amarillo and Canyon, but there was this little pocket above Wayside where it was clear. If it had been raining, it would have taken twice as long trying to get that kid up that trail.”

Several staff members assisted in rescuing the boy, including four certified EMTs, two police officers and multiple people on the camp’s rappelling staff. Two 2014 Canyon High graduates, Nick Davidson and Brian Herrington, were among the people rescuing the boy.

Barnett said everyone came together and played their specific roles well.

“Even though it was a terrible thing that happened, it was an experience that I think we all needed to have,” Barnett said. “Things like that don’t happen very often, so it gave us a reference point. Now we know if something goes wrong, these plans we have work.”