ALBANY (AP) - An appeals court has concluded that the state is not liable for the drownings of four camp counselors who died when one jumped into an Adirondack river and the other three tried to rescue him.

The Appellate Division of state Supreme Court said the state, as landowner, has a duty to take reasonable precautions against dangerous conditions, but that the duty "does not extend to open and obvious conditions that are natural geographic phenomena" that can readily be seen.

Based on testimony from witnesses and rescue personnel and photographs, Hon. Bernard Malone Jr. wrote that recent rain had raised the water level 15 feet higher than normal and increased its turbulence, and the counselors were aware of the dangerous conditions. He noted that the area was also remote and not easily accessible.

Authorities said the four had little chance of escaping the raging water of the rain-swollen Boquet River on Aug. 12, 2003 at Split Rock Falls in Elizabethtown, 110 miles north of Albany. With conditions too hazardous to put divers in the water, three bodies were recovered a day later with poles. Some of the victims were considered strong swimmers, part of a group of counselors from Camp Baco in Minerva on a day off.

The victims were Jonah Richman, 18; Adam Cohen, 19; and Jordan Satin, 19, all of Woodmere on Long Island; and David Altschuler, 18, of Philadelphia.

The area included a popular swimming hole, but the drowning happened in the series of falls several hundred yards away.

Malone wrote in a decision released April 3 that Altschuler and some others left the main group and went to the whirlpool area, where he jumped in despite his brother's warning not to. The other three jumped in to try to save him.

The other four justices concurred with Malone that the state was not negligent. The state Court of Claims previously refused to dismiss suits brought by the families of Cohen, Richman and Satin.

"This conclusion is consistent with those cases, which have held that a landowner does not owe a duty with respect to natural transitory conditions existing in bodies of water, such as the presence of sandbars, rip currents or rogue waves," Malone wrote. He dismissed the claims of the victims' families that the pool was a " ‘drowning machine,' which was not apparent from viewing the surface."