A Cal Poly student was killed Saturday in an accident at Big Sur’s Salmon Creek waterfall, the Monterey County sheriff’s office said.
Kenneth Taylor, 21, was found dead by emergency responders around 7:45 p.m. April 6 at the base of the 120-foot waterfall, the sheriff’s office said. No details were given of how the death was thought to have occurred, but the office said foul play was not suspected.
Though the waterfall is in Monterey County, the first responders were from the San Luis Obispo County sheriff’s department, and a spokesperson for that agency told the Tribune newspaper it was described as a climbing accident.
A statement Monday from the president of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, said Taylor was a third-year mechanical engineering student from Richland, Wash.
He was described as an outdoors enthusiast, a founding member of Cal Poly’s Alpine Club and a trip leader for the student association’s Poly Escapes.
Salmon Creek Falls is a quarter-mile walk from a trailhead on Highway 1 north of Ragged Point.
