Oregon man dies after floating over waterfall on an inner tube

Dillon Falls has a 15ft drop straight into a Class 5 whitewater, the second most dangerous type of river rapids

(Deschutes National Forest)

An Oregon man died after floating over a waterfall on an inner tube, according to officials.

The 41-year-old from Bend, Oregon, has not been identified by police but died at the state’s Dillon Falls on Tuesday.

Authorities say that a witness saw him go over the falls in an inner tube but never resurfaced and alerted the emergency services.

Dillon Falls has a 15-foot drop straight into a Class 5 whitewater, the second most dangerous type of river rapids on the scale.

“The initial information obtained from the 911 caller was that a male in a tube had gone over the falls 30-35 minutes prior to the call and bystanders had not been able to locate the male,” the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office wrote on Facebook.

The sheriff’s office, the US Forest Service and Bend Fire & Rescue responded to Dillon Falls, and a drone was used to find the man’s body in the water below the falls.

A sheriff’s office search and rescue team used a boat to retrieve the man’s body and brought him to the Aspen Camp Boat Launch.

The last fatality at the falls came in 2018, when the father of blind athlete Nancy Stevens drowned at the site, according to OregonLive.

According to Visit Bend, Dillon Falls “are a significant obstacle to whitewater running and are rated Class 5. … Dillon Falls starts off as a dramatic, 15-foot drop, then becomes a steep and violent Class 5 rapids with a hazardously positioned tree in the center before ending as Class 2 and 3.”