Bodies of two missing canoeists found after their boat went through a Minnesota waterfall

The bodies of two canoeists who went missing two weeks ago when their canoes were swept away by a waterfall in Minnesota have been found.

Last month, four people in two canoes went over Curtain Falls in the Boundary Waters Wilderness Area and fell 30 feet into Iron Lake below. The waterfall is located on the U.S.-Canada border.

Two people were initially rescued downstream from a small island and were evacuated by a Minnesota Department of Natural Resources helicopter.

Search crews located the body of Reis Melvin Grams, 40, on Monday, while the body of Jesse Haugen, 41, of Cambridge, Minnesota, was discovered on Friday.

The two rescued people were earlier identified as Kyle Thomas Sellers, 47, and Erik Michael Grams, 43, brother of Reis Melvin Grams.

Mr Sellers was injured in the fall and was taken to hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries. A fifth person in the group, Jared Jay Lohse, 33, was on the shore at the time of the incident.

Bad weather had hampered the initial search. Nate Skelton, division commander for the St. Louis County Sheriff's Office, told the Star Tribune.

The missing men were part of a group who knew the area.

The men were fishing above the falls when “something happened; one of them got into distress, the other tried to help, and they both ended up going over the falls,” Skelton told the outlet.