Woman Survives Terrifying Cliff Fall After Cold Plunge Goes Wrong

Maxime Rancourt stepped into the Pacific off a San Francisco cliff for what she expected to be a brief cold plunge. Seconds later, she was fighting for her life.

"I was just going to go in the water a little bit. To have a cold plunge. Which I did for a moment. I was looking at the waves and said they are so beautiful. I'm a good swimmer but I don't usually swim there," Rancourt told KGO-TV. A violent current caught her almost immediately, dragging her deeper into surf that, according to Unilad's reporting, was running at just 56 degrees Fahrenheit with unusually strong winds battering the coastline.

"The current was extreme. I jumped and grabbed the rock to stay there, and the water was still coming at me," she said. With no clear path back to shore, she began moving along the rock face, her skin scraping against the cliff with every shift. "Everything went so fast. I was on the rock and started climbing from left to right and then I realized that it wasn't a good idea, but it was the idea to save myself in the moment."

She held on for at least 30 minutes, roughly 70 feet above the ocean according to Unilad, as rocks cut into her body. "I knew I was maybe going to die," she said in an interview clip posted by ABC News. The scrapes visible across her skin in ABC7 footage told the story of every minute she held on.

A stranger spotted her on the cliff and called 911. Rancourt, who said she wasn't wearing her glasses and could barely make him out, later called him "one of her angels." The San Francisco Fire Department coastal rescue team arrived approximately five minutes after that call, per ABC7. One firefighter rappelled the rock face to reach her while two colleagues anchored grab lines at the top.

Once she was safely up, Rancourt embraced her rescuer on the spot. "Thank you for saving my life," she told him. "Because of you, I'm going to have a future, and I'm going to have kids." In a subsequent interview with ABC7, she did not soften the arithmetic of what had happened: "I want to say thank you so much. Because I now have a future because of this person. I thought about it. My destiny was gone in one minute."

ABC7's data team found that the San Francisco Fire Department averages 32 cliff rescues per year. Rancourt is now counted among those who made it out. Video of the rescue and her embrace with the responding firefighter circulated widely after ABC7 aired the story, with Unilad reporting it has been viewed more than a million times across the country.

Rancourt said she has no plans to return to the water.