Have you ever helped rescue a friend from falling off a waterfall?

It was Summer Solstice just outside of Denali National Park in Alaska.  The longest day of the year in the land of the midnight sun.  Myself and my newfound gang of transient friends from everywhere and nowhere had been bonding over the amount of sun we were recieving.  It didn't matter what time of the day it was.  It was summertime, and we were in love.  We had been hearing through the grapevine about a place called Dragonfly Creek.  The creeks on Parks Highway were all marked aphabetically so we knew we could get there in not too much time.  So we packed up our bags with a little bit of camping gear and water and a whole lot of booze and stuck out our thumbs while walking toward Fairbanks.  In no time a small van stopped.  A man stepped out and asked us where we were headed. It seemed at once we all screamed Dragonfly Creek...and someone must've added "but we aren't quite sure where it's at."  The man luckily knew exactly where it was at and seemed to be very fond of the location.  So the ten or fifteen vagabond friends and myself all piled into the back of the small van bringing to mind a clown car to this day.  Before we knew it we were there.  The man even wanted to walk us down to a campsite he knew.  It was a  very steep but short trail that led us down into the trees.  There it was.  A perfect campsite.  The Nenana River was a short walk away  Such a powerful force. So silty it was almost mercury in color.  We headed back under the trees and set up camp.  The man bid us farwell and told us he might come back to visit if he was lucky.  At this point we all split up into small groups to explore the area.  Before I had explored at all I heard someone yell "WATERFAAALLL!"  Of course we all followed the voice.  And there it was.  Magnificent.  Fourty feet high or so.  Two tiers separated the falls.  One flow, a flat area, and then a twenty five foot drop or so.  My new roomate Adam was a worldclass climber and he seemed to see something different than the rest of us.  A great climbing route.  He and two others, Seth and Jeff, decided to climb.  The first part was easy.  More of a hike than a climb.  Once up on the flat area that separated the two tiers of the falls Adam walked the other two novices through a slightly technical move directly above the crashing waters.  One hand here.  One foot here.  And you're good.  Jeff goes, no problem.  Seth goes, no problem.  Adam lines up for the same move and the rock in his hand, the same rock the others held, collapsed.  Adam started to glide down the waters at an alarming rate.  There was a sickening gasp from the crowd.  He disapeared into the flat, middle part of the falls and it went silent.  Just then a bare foot came over the edge.  This was the end.  Our new friend was dead....but wait...he stopped.  One of us screamed for someone to get rope.  We knew we had it somewhere in our beerpacks.  While waiting for the rope we examined what had  happened.  As Adam was falling he realized parts of the fall were still frozen from winter.  Being the expert climber he was he saw a good handhold.  He had punched his fist into the ice and saved himself.  So we played the waiting game.  Someone finally arrived back at the falls...with a bit of twine.  Not the climbing rope we were hoping for.  We had to take action.  That ice wasn't going to hold for long.  So I climbed up to the exact spot of the incident, the broken rock, with Jeff's little brother Kelly.  We pulled a large branch from a tree.  Kelly stood in front extending the branch to Adam.  Once Adam had a hold of it I told Kelly to pull.  Adam was close to making it up, but not quite.  At that point I put my hands around Kelly's waist and said on the count of three I would fall flat backwards.  So here it was.  The moment of truth.  I jerked myself back and Kelly followed me.  We hit the ground hard, but it seemed we had pulled Adam close enough to extend a hand to him.  And that's what we did.  Pulled him right up.  Having a new friend almost die right in front of your eyes and preventing it from happening is one hell of a bonding experience.  We spent the rest of the night happily consuming the contents of the beerpacks and when midnight struck we turned our heads to the sky and howled at the sun.