Jimmy Angel, the Flamingo Stuck on Top of the Devil's Mountain, and the Waterfall That Carries His Name Forever

Jimmy Angel was a Missouri-born bush pilot who, on October 9, 1937, made a forced landing on top of Auyantepui - a sheer-walled plateau rising nearly a mile out of the Venezuelan jungle - and left his monoplane there for 33 years. The waterfall he had been chasing since the late 1920s was later confirmed as the highest on Earth and named Angel Falls in his honor.

Who Was Jimmy Angel?

James Crawford Angel was born in Springfield, Missouri, in 1899. He learned to fly during World War I, spent the 1920s barnstorming, did aerial work in China, and flew charters across Central America and Panama. He was the kind of pilot who treated the airplane as a tool for reaching places roads didn’t go.

By the late 1920s, Angel was based in Panama and Venezuela, flying missionaries, prospectors, and government officials into a roadless interior where aviation was the only practical transport.

How Did Jimmy Angel First See the Falls?

Around 1927 or 1928, Angel was hired by a prospector named J.R. McCracken to fly over the Venezuelan highlands in search of gold. The region is dominated by tepuis - enormous flat-topped sandstone mountains rising from the Gran Sabana like ruins from another world.

During those flights, Angel spotted something from the air: a waterfall pouring off the edge of one of those plateaus in a single, unbroken drop. He had no instruments to measure it. He had never seen anything like it.

He kept going back.

What Is Auyantepui?

Auyantepui - “Devil’s Mountain” in the language of the Pemon people, who have lived in that region for centuries - is one of the largest tepuis in Venezuela. Its summit covers nearly 300 square miles. Its walls drop off in sheer cliffs, some falling more than 3,000 feet.

The waterfall Angel kept finding poured off the edge of that plateau from an altitude of around 3,200 feet. The free fall alone - before the water struck anything - exceeded 2,600 feet. That is nearly half a mile of open air.

For comparison, Niagara Falls drops about 167 feet. Angel’s waterfall was more than 15 times higher. Almost no one outside the local Pemon people knew it existed.

What Happened on the 1937 Landing?

On October 9, 1937, Angel loaded his monoplane, El Rio Caroni, with his wife Marie, botanist Gustavo Heny, and local guide Miguel Delgado. He had been convinced for years that somewhere on the summit of Auyantepui there was a way to reach the gold McCracken had once pointed him toward. The only way to find out was to land up there.

Angel identified a stretch of flat ground that looked solid from the air - savanna grassland at elevation. He made his approach and touched down without violence. Then the wheels sank.

The ground on top of Auyantepui was not stable grassland. It was boggy and saturated, the kind of terrain that appears firm from altitude and becomes a trap the moment weight settles on it. El Rio Caroni nosed forward, the gear dug in, and the aircraft stopped - stuck in mud at nearly 2,400 meters above sea level.

Angel ran the throttle. He had his passengers push. The mud held. The aircraft wasn’t broken. It was simply swallowed by the terrain.

How Did Angel’s Party Get Off the Mountain?

After hours of failed attempts to free the aircraft, the four of them accepted what anyone stranded in a truly remote place eventually must: they were not flying out.

The hike down from Auyantepui took 11 days.

The sides of the tepuis are not merely steep - they are actively hostile. Cloud forest, sudden drops, streams cutting through sandstone, vegetation so dense that progress sometimes measured in feet per hour. The Pemon people knew the routes. Angel’s party had to find them mostly by feel.

Marie Angel later said the hardest part wasn’t the physical difficulty. It was the uncertainty - not being able to see the terrain beyond the next thirty feet, not knowing whether the next step led toward a cliff or a path.

All four of them made it out. Exhausted and scraped raw, but alive and largely unhurt.

What Happened to El Rio Caroni?

The aircraft stayed where it had stopped. El Rio Caroni sat on top of Auyantepui for 33 years - through tropical rains, through decades of weather. It was occasionally visible from other aircraft flying nearby. Known to exist. Impossible to reach.

Jimmy Angel died in 1956, at age 56, following complications from a crash in Panama. He never saw his aircraft come off the mountain.

In 1970, the Venezuelan Air Force lifted El Rio Caroni from the summit by helicopter. Thirty-three years of tropical exposure had done its work, but the basic structure was intact. The aircraft was restored and placed on permanent display at the airport in Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela - the airport where Angel had based many of his operations.

Why Is Angel Falls Named After a Bush Pilot?

In 1949, Venezuelan and American explorers mounted a formal expedition to the waterfall. The measurements confirmed what Angel had been telling people for nearly two decades.

The official drop: 3,212 feet - the highest waterfall on Earth, by a margin that is not close. The Venezuelan government named it Salto Angel. Angel Falls.

Angel didn’t earn that name through a single dramatic act. He earned it by going back, flight after flight, year after year, to a waterfall the geographical societies weren’t interested in and that most people assumed was a bush pilot’s exaggeration. He flew the Gran Sabana when there was no recognition in it, because he had seen something magnificent and couldn’t stop trying to show it to the rest of the world.

There is a type of pilot the aviation world once produced in greater numbers - pilots who flew into the blank spaces on the map not because someone was paying them to, but because the blank spaces were there. Angel was one of them, alongside names like Don Sheldon, Harold Gillam, and Noel Wien. Their names appear on mountains, bays, waterfalls, and airstrips across the parts of the world that required airplanes to become known at all.

Key Takeaways

Jimmy Angel (1899–1956) was a Missouri-born bush pilot who first spotted the world’s highest waterfall during prospecting flights over Venezuela around 1927–1928.
Angel Falls (Salto Angel) has a confirmed drop of 3,212 feet - more than 15 times the height of Niagara Falls - making it the tallest waterfall on Earth.
On October 9, 1937, Angel’s monoplane El Rio Caroni became stuck in boggy summit terrain at 2,400 meters elevation on Auyantepui after a seemingly smooth touchdown.
Angel, his wife Marie, botanist Gustavo Heny, and guide Miguel Delgado hiked off the plateau over 11 days through dense jungle and cloud forest.
El Rio Caroni remained on the summit for 33 years before the Venezuelan Air Force recovered it by helicopter in 1970; it is now on permanent display in Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela.