U.K. Climber Survives 1,000-Foot Fall

A climber slipped and fell approximately 980 feet down a mountain face in the Scottish Highland Mountains while trekking with 24 other climbers and survived, Agence France Presse reports.

When a helicopter rescue crew found Adam Potter, 36, approximately 30 minutes after the fall, he was awake, on his feet, and reading a map.

"We honestly thought it couldn't have been him," Lieutenant Tim Barker, the rescue crew's observer, told the AFP. "It seemed impossible. So we retraced our path back up the mountain and, sure enough, there were bits of his kit in a vertical line all the way up where he had obviously lost them during the fall.

"It was quite incredible. He must have literally glanced off the outcrops as he fell, almost flying."

Glasgow-native Potter told the AFP he lost his footing on some ice on Saturday and fell down the craggy and near-vertical eastern face of Sgurr Choinnich Mor, a 3,589-foot high mountain in the western Scotland.

"The speed accumulated really fast," Potter said. "I was trying to slow myself down but every time I slowed myself down I would then go over a cliff edge, so I would get all my speed back. Towards the end I had almost lost all of my speed, then I actually saw what I was about to go over, which was one more cliff, and I actually thought that would be it.

"I thought that might have been the end on that one," he added.

Even though the rescue crew's paramedic said Potter was "shaking from extreme emotional shock," he walked away with some superficial cuts, bruises and a minor chest injury, the daily Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Members of his rescue crew said they could not believe how lucky Potter was to be alive, let alone relatively well.

"I had lost my hat and gloves and walking poles on the way down, so straight away I put on my spare hat, my spare gloves" before the rescue crew got there, Potter said. "I was OK for walking about at that point. The helicopter came down to my area, could see that I was alright because I was walking about, so thought it must be the guys on the top. So they went to the top but my mates pointed downhill, so it came back down to me and that`s when they realized I was the actual casualty, even though I was up and moving around."