A four-year-old boy survived a 70-foot fall from a cliff at the Red River Gorge the afternoon of Oct. 15.
The child was hiking with his parents near Princess Arch when he slipped and fell, hitting multiple ledges and experiencing 30-foot sheer drops.
By the time Wolfe County Search and Rescue were called around 2 p.m., the boy’s father was already on his way down to him. The father recovered the fallen child, who was scraped, bruised, and shocked but otherwise completely fine. The father then brought the child downhill and across the Red River via the Sheltowee Trace suspension bridge to Kentucky Highway 715.
At the highway, Breathitt-Wolfe Emergency Medical Services met up with the father and son, where they examined the boy and released him back to his parents. The Daniel Boone National Forest branch of the U.S. Forest Service also arrived to provide scene safety.
The rescue team told the Lexington Herald that the boy’s survival was “nothing short of a miracle.”
“Incredibly, while the child was certainly scraped up and bruised, he appeared to be otherwise okay,” read the rescue team’s Facebook post regarding the incident. “He was very talkative, and very interested in superheroes. The only superhero present was him.”
