A British climber had a miraculous escape after plummeting 100 feet down a rocky mountain face.
Safety consultant Mark Roberts captured the hair-raising fall on his helmet camera and has since published the footage online. The film shows him hurtling oversharp rocks and ice as he desperately tries to control his descent.
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The 47-year-old was making his way up the Mount Parsley Fern Lefthand Gully of Mount Snowdon in Wales when he was knocked off by a chunk of falling ice. He lost his grip and began sliding backwards down the gully, dropping his ice axe, and had to be airlifted to hospital after injuring his ankle on the way down, reports the BBC.
Roberts was wearing safety equipment, including a helmet, to minimize the risk of serious harm; he was also lucky that some members of the local mountain rescue team happened to be on an exercise nearby. They arrived on the scene within 30 minutes of receiving the emergency call made by his friend.
“You have to laugh sometimes,” he told the British Mountaineering Council website. “But, seriously, even with experience of risk assessment and making decisions, sometimes things just happen. When it all happens so quickly, you just try not panic and hope there’s some luck with you.”