ROCK SPRINGS – The body of a Rock Springs man was recovered from Flaming Gorge Saturday afternoon.
Sweetwater County Sheriff Rich Haskell and County Coroner Dale Majhanovich said 24-year-old Michael Pond, 24, was on an outing at Flaming Gorge in the Big Firehole area on Saturday in the company of four friends.
The friends told investigating deputies and Sheriff’s Office detectives that they drove to a spot at the top of a series of high cliffs along the lake shore, where Pond said he wished to make the jump into the water.
Pond’s friends said they tried unsuccessfully to talk him out of the leap and he jumped. Once he went under, they told officials, he never came up.
Authorities were notified around 2:30 PM. Deputies and other emergency responders, including the Sweetwater Boat Team and Sweetwater Dive Team, the Wyoming Game Fish Department, and the United States Forest Service, converged at the scene, located about 3 miles southwest of the bay at Big Firehole.
Sweetwater Dive Team members were able to recover Pond’s body at 8:51 PM in about 42 feet of water.
Investigators gauged the cliff’s height where Pond jumped at just under 175 feet.
An autopsy has been scheduled. Authorities said no signs of foul play are evident.
Saturday’s tragedy was not the first for the scene. In 1999, at virtually the identical spot, 19-year-old Kevin Corazza lost his life in much the same way as Pond.
“Cliff diving at Flaming Gorge is extremely dangerous,” said Haskell. “People don’t realize how terrific the impact with the water is from that height and you don’t really know how deep the water is. Jumping in from any serious elevation above the surface is a bad idea.”
Pond’s is the third death on Flaming Gorge this year. In May, Danny Angelo Durante of Jackson perished when his small boat capsized in the Gorge just south of the Wyoming-Utah border and Mitch Hunt of Rock Springs drowned in Sage Creek Bay June 2. In yet another mishap on May 3, three young Utah men narrowly escaped death when their own small boat capsized in bad weather in the Anvil Draw area. The three were rescued by other boaters.
