While the Canandaigua community continues to recover from severe flooding in early July, a high school student is able to move on with his life after barely escaping the flash floods there.

"I seriously thought that that was it for me,” said 17-year-old Webster Schroeder High School student Tristan Bauer. “That I wasn’t going to come home, or at least I wasn’t going to come home in a car alive.”

Earlier this month, Bauer and two buddies decided to hike at Onanda Park in the town of Canandaigua. He says it started to rain, but they kept going, trying to reach the top of various waterfalls.

“We made it all the way up to a third waterfall and it was at that point that the rain started getting really hard,” he said. “And I started to see mud coming down the third waterfall. So I got a little bit concerned, and I decided it was time to turn around and head back. Once we got back down to the top of the first waterfall, that’s when the flash flood came.”

Bauer says the water rushed in in just seconds.

“When they say "flash," they mean flash,” he said. “It was super quick. I didn’t even notice it at first. I just looked down and to my right, I just see a little piece of a tree floating by, and I’m like, ‘Hmm.’ I realize that the water level went below my feet all the way up to about knee height. I’m like, ‘OK, this is bad.’”

They decided to climb up. Bauer made it part of the way.

“I was able to climb on top of an old tree that was hanging at about a 45-degree angle, and I was able to get on top of that,” he said. “But if I tried to go any higher, I would slide down the hill. And at this point, I was hanging off of the first waterfall a little bit.”

Bauer was trapped in this location. His friends made it to higher ground. He knew his mom would worry.

“I managed to send one text to her when I got cell service,” he said. “I just said, ‘Mom, I’m OK, I don’t know when I’m going to be home, I’m alone and I’m trapped in a flash flood.’”

“When I got the one text from Tristan saying, ‘Mom I’m stuck, I’m alone, I’m separated from my friends,’ my heart sank," said Tristan's mother, Heather Bauer.

Bauer says he clung to part of a tree on a slippery slope leaning over a waterfall.

“What was going through my mind was if I make one slip, I’m falling down this waterfall,” he said. “And I didn’t even know what it looked like at the bottom. But I’m just, like, 'if I make one slip, I’m going to get carried away by this and I’m going to fall down the waterfalls.' So I just wanted to leave something behind in case something bad did happen, I’m just going to say a few words and save it on my phone and just hope that it’s viewable if I do slip.”

Bauer’s mother learned that her son had recorded a goodbye message during Spectrum News 1’s interview. They watched it together.

“I didn’t mean for it to end this way,” said Tristan in the recorded cell phone message. “I didn’t want this to happen. Just know I love you mom and dad and grandma and Karen.”

It’s a message that can now be deleted, because after a couple of hours, Tristan heard his name called out and spotted a first responder at the top of a steep hill.

“Then one guy comes down and he’s almost repelling down this hill," said Bauer.

The Canandaigua Ropes Rescue Team pulled Bauer to the top and out of danger. Rescuers had safely found his two friends at least two hours prior.

“The firefighters were like, ‘Yeah, for a minute there we were looking for your body. We thought you were dead,’" said Bauer.

The flash floods came through so fast, at the time, Bauer had no idea so many others in Canandaigua and New York state were also coping with the rushing waters.

“It was a pretty weird experience,” he said. “It took me a while to sort of calm back down and realize I’m alive, I’m safe, and sort of understand what just happened.”

“[I’m] just thankful that he’s here," Heather said.