If you were falling off a cliff, it's understandable to think your life might just be over, but a skier who was in this terrifying situation has explained how he managed to survive.
Devin Stratton was skiing in the Utah mountains with a camera attached to his helmet that captured the moment he accidentally fell off a 150-foot cliff and miraculously survived.
Stratton shared the footage to his Instagram in 2017 and said that he managed to avoid all injury, not so much as a bruise.
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In a follow up video on YouTube, he explained what happened to cause him to fall and what was going through his head in this near-fatal incident on Mount Timpanogos.
“I feel super lucky to be alive, obviously I didn’t know the cliff was there and I was going too fast, I shouldn’t have been going that fast,” Stratton said.
“I turned sideways and tried to stop because I realized it was a big cliff and when I saw how big it was I thought of my cousin John who was a quadriplegic and I thought I was going to be paralyzed."
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He continued: “When I went over the edge and looked down I thought I was dead, no question in my mind, I was dead for sure.
“Even though it didn’t sound like it, I was praying in my head, basically just please help me.
“When I landed, I was surprised to be alive, and I definitely thanked God for letting me not die.”
In the original post to his Instagram page, Stratton revealed that he did break a lot of his gear but was basically unharmed.
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He even thanked a friend who helped him look for his ski for five hours afterwards, which he lost during the tumble. I’d say that is a pretty fair trade.
Explaining why he doesn’t think he ended up injured, the skier said: “It was a factor of a lot of things, I had a helmet on, the snow was deep and there was a steep angle I landed on, I cleared the rocks.”
Despite this, Stratton said he still thought it was a miracle that he was even alive, let alone wasn’t seriously injured.
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Stratton also joked about how he had to ease his mother into the severity of his fall. Because understandably, to a parent, hearing your child fell off a mountain might worry you a little.
The skier said he was super blessed to still be around and joked he might have learnt his lesson the easiest way possible, thanks to his lack of injuries.
Gerrard Kaonga