Lynn Canyon nearly claims another life

A 21-year-old man is recovering from mild hypothermia after being rescued from the frigid waters in Lynn Canyon Park in North Vancouver on Tuesday night.

Jordan King had jumped off the 10-metre cliff into the water,but then spent an hour spinning in a strong eddy, unable to get to shore.

He said he was pushed under the surface, and thought he was going to die "when the rocks were banging up against my head underneath the water."

It took North Vancouver firefighters three hours to rescue the young man and get him up the cliff to safety.

Assistant fire chief Curtis Bremner says the 21-year-old wouldn't have been able to get out of the swirling pool on his own, and would have died.

"He wouldn't be able to swim through it, and he just would have got recycled and recycled in the pool until he got too tired to keep himself afloat and then he would have drowned."

Bremner says he has made many similar rescues of young men jumping off the cliffs into the so-called "90 foot pool,"and that Monday night's incidentis probably the first of severalmore this summer.

In 1998, a 13-year-old boy died at the same spot.

"I simply made the wrong choice at the wrong time," said King, as he shook hands with the firefighters who rescued him.