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Yellowstone rescue workers are looking for a 20-year-old Utah man who climbed into the Yellowstone River on Tuesday and let the current carry him over the 308-foot Lower Falls. NEWS&GUIDE FILE PHOTO / BRADLY J. BONER

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Yellowstone rescue workers are looking for a 20-year-old Utah man who climbed into the Yellowstone River on Tuesday and let the current carry him over the 308-foot Lower Falls.

Yellowstone National Park spokesman Al Nash said park officials believe it was a suicide attempt.

“Witnesses were clear that this young man climbed over the railing and jumped into the river and went over the falls,” he said. “Based on [interviews] with witnesses, we determined that this indeed was a suicide attempt.”

Nash said the man, who went over the falls at 1:50 p.m., is presumed dead. 

“With a fall of 300 feet, you’re either going to strike rock or you’re going to strike the surface of the water, which is as hard as rock,” he said. “It would not be considered a survivable fall.”

Yellowstone officials are withholding the man’s name pending notification of his family.

Nash said investigators have received conflicting reports of exactly where the man lived in Utah.

Search efforts Wednesday included a helicopter and rescue workers along the shoreline, but the steep-sided Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is 20 miles long and 800 to 1,200 feet deep, making those efforts difficult, Nash said.

“There are a few trails that go close to the edge, but it is very hard to access the river along much of the length of the canyon,” he said. “Where we can access the riverbank, we are. We also will have people above the bank who are using binoculars and spotting scopes to look down into and along the river. The waters are hazardous enough so that we’re not going to be putting personnel on a raft or a boat on the river itself.”

The search is also confounded by uncertainty over where to look.

“Certainly the water could carry him some distance downstream,” Nash said. “But there are a great number of places where something could get lodged along the river and certainly could be lodged beneath the surface and not visible.”