A man is lucky to be alive after taking a terrifying tumble down a steep mountainside in China — and he caught it all on his own camera.
Dramatic footage of the hiker’s high-altitude wipeout has racked up nearly 445,000 shares on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok.
“I realized I couldn’t get up at all and was sliding faster and faster,” Yang Meng, 42, told CNN while recounting the near-death experience.
Meng was using a hand-held 360-degree camera to record his hike through the Fanzengjian mountains in Anhui, about 280 miles west of Shanghai, when he slipped and fell on the rain-slicked rocks.
“That’s when it hit me – I must be falling off a cliff,” Meng recounted of the moment he started to slide uncontrollably downward.
The self-recorded video shows the hiker shooting down the cliff like a human slip’n’slide.
Fortunately, Meng hits a tree, which stops his fall, likely saving his life.
“When I hit the tree, it felt like a heavy rock crashing down. I was just thinking, ‘There’s no way I’m dead,’” said the grateful rock scrambler.
Despite the dramatic plunge, he emerged from the incident unscathed, aside from some bruising on his leg and small cuts on his hand and thigh.
Douyin viewers commented on how lucky he was to survive the fall.
Meng said the incident taught him that “life is short” so people need to “cherish it every day.”
Naturally, such a topple might dissuade many people from hiking ever again.
However, Meng said that he’s not going to let the ordeal prevent him doing the things he loves.
“If anything, it’s pushing me to explore the world even more,” he said.
The saga came after powerful rains pummeled the province, likely spurred by typhoons Yagi and Bebinca.
The latter, which made landfall Monday, was described by Chinese media as the strongest storm to hit Shanghai in 75 years.
Over 400,000 people were evacuated ahead of the lashing winds and torrential downpour, which inundated roads with water, and knocked out power to some homes, AP reported.
Meanwhile, schools and roads were closed and thousands of flights were canceled as well.
