Going back a few pages:

I think we need to think this through the eyes of Cooper.

He completes a daring skydive from 10000 feet, belted by freezing winds and pelted in the face by freezing rain. He plummets through the darkness before pulling the cord and get roughly jerked back into the air before miraculously floating safely onto the beach at Tena Bar.

He’s not standing on the beach at Tena Bar, filled with adrenaline and shivering from the cold. He has no idea where he is. Somewhere along the Columbia he guesses. But before or after the turn north? He has no clue.

Jacked with adrenaline, fear, elation, and panic, he decides to bury the money just beneath the sandy surface right where he landed. When he’s done, he flees into the rural darkness with his business suit soaked through and his wet loafers giving him unbearable blisters.

Then, six months later, he somehow learns - probably from local papers - that the Columbia is flooding. Again, he is filled with fear and panic because he foolishly buried his hard earned loot mere feet from the river’s edge. He left it there all winter praying that no one would discover it.

He hurries to where he think he buried it. It was over six months ago in the dark so backtracking is nearly impossible, but he does it. In the cover of darkness, he sloshes through calf-deep water and by a miracle locates the exact spot he buried. He digs under the water through water-logged sand and brings up bundle after bundle. It’s dark and he has no time to count - despite the fact that he risked life and limb to get the money. What does a few thousand matter after all?

He escapes with the loot, leaving nearly $6000 behind to lay there undisturbed for 8 years.

I can only speak for myself, but he idea of Cooper surviving the jump, landing in an unknown location in the dark, burying money just yards from the water, not returning until 6 months later, finding the exact spot under feet of water, probably under the cover of darkness, retrieving the cash, but not being careful enough to account for all of it, seems outlandish.

Outlandish? Yes. But true? Maybe.

Chaucer, you see things through a harsh lens. "Face pelted with freezing rain"? Hmmm. Maybe. At 5,500 feet when he hit the 85% cloud cover it might have been raining. But freezing? Remember, he might have already deployed his parachute and would be coasting downward under a very large umbrella at 1,000 feet per minute when he hit that moisture.

I wonder how you would characterize Richard LaPoint's descent from 12,000 feet in the January cold of Colorado while wearing only a shirt and slacks - and of course his famous cowboy boots.

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Outlandish? Yes. But true? Maybe.

Chaucer, you see things through a harsh lens. "Face pelted with freezing rain"? Hmmm. Maybe. At 5,500 feet when he hit the 85% cloud cover it might have been raining. But freezing? Remember, he might have already deployed his parachute and would be coasting downward under a very large umbrella at 1,000 feet per minute when he hit that moisture.

I wonder how you would characterize Richard LaPoint's descent from 12,000 feet in the January cold of Colorado while wearing only a shirt and slacks - and of course his famous cowboy boots.

And it's pretty hard to re-appear unnoticed anywhere with 20+ lbs of cash in a makeshift money belt. Plus, didn't McCoy hide his money in a culvert? They tracked him, of course, being post-Cooper and all. But if Cooper were going to hide the money in the woods, it would have to be somewhere easy to find again. An experienced trekker/parachutist familiar with the area would have been ready for the (debatable) weather conditions. If he knew the lay of the land well enough to get to Tina Bar, it would be easy to come back for the money later - even just days later - if anyone had noticed him, he could pretend to be a treasure hunter. But would anyone even have been looking in the TBar area at the time? If not, that makes it an even easier fetch.

Then the upper 6 inches of sand where the money was found dates back to November 24, 1971 ? Palmer said it was only 2 years old at most ? Or, doesn't the age of the sand the money was found in matter?   

There was other debris and trash found in the same layer of sand as the money. Palmer noted all of that stuff was new, with very little rust or oxidation.

Sorry, perhaps I didn't articulate my point very well.

Obviously, I took some creative license with my description, and I won't pretend to know what exactly happened to Cooper after he jumped. However, my point was to suggest how farfetched the theory that Cooper landed near Tena Bar, buried the money immediately, and then returned six months later to recover it. It certainly sounds easy to write, but when you consider all of the possible variables (the weather, disorientation, adrenaline, flooding, passage of time) this theory becomes harder and harder to swallow.

 I think it is far more likely that Cooper died in the jump and the money ended up on Tena Bar through natural means.