UK climber who survived 1000-ft plunge determined to climb Everest

LONDON - A UK climber, who survived a 1,000ft fall from a Scottish mountain, has said that he is determined to go ahead with the planned Mount Everest expedition.

As he is recovering in a hospital, Adam Potter spoke of his extraordinary brush with death and insisted that the experience has not put him off climbing again, reports the Independent.

The 35-year-old, who lives in Glasgow, was standing next to his girlfriend when he slipped and fell over a sheer precipice close to the peak of Sgurr Choinnich Mor, near Ben Nevis, Scotland.

He tried desperately to slow his fall, grasping at the snow and ice with his hands, and kicking out his feet as he tumbled down, but without any effect.

The Royal Navy Search and Rescue team sent to recover his body were astonished to instead find him standing up at the bottom - albeit shakily - and consulting his map, trying to work out how to get back to his car.

Potter suffered three minor fractures in his vertebrate, a ‘fat lip’ and multiple bruises.

He survived the drop because he bounced off slopes so steep that they slowed him, rather than brought his fall to an abrupt and fatal halt.

The snow is thought to have helped cushion his landings, and he said that his backpack ‘probably saved him’ by absorbing the worst of many impacts.

Lieutenant Tim Barker, one of the rescue team, said that when the call came through to find a fallen climber the crew was convinced they were going to pick up a dead body and were amazed to find him with little more than ‘whiplash and shock’.

The climb with four friends, including his girlfriend Kate Berry, was a training exercise for a trip to Mount Everest.

Potter said that during the fall he was worried about missing out on the Himalayas.

“I was thinking about my trip I’m about to go on in two months to climb Everest. I was thinking it would put a stop to that,” he said. (ANI)