Climber makes wrong turn, falls 1,000 feet, then reads map

I caught the end of “Crank” on TV over the weekend and wondered how the viewer was supposed to believe the final scene, when Jason Statham falls seemingly incessantly from the Los Angeles sky and then bounces off a sedan without his body liquidating.

But then I remembered having seen and read about those rare stories in which a skydiver survived a massive chute-less landing. Like this one last year. And then I read about this Scottish climber yesterday. He fell off a 1,000-foot cliff and barely showed any bruises. Rescuers found him at the bottom of the cliff reading a map.

From the Daily Record:

Adam Potter plunged the height of the Eiffel Tower before landing at the foot of a Munro.

Yesterday, he said: “It was like being on a flume, except more painful.”

Stunned rescuers found Adam standing up and calmly reading a map. And he’s still hoping to have a crack at climbing Everest in March.

Adam, 35, told the Record: “The only thought that I can remember as I fell was, ‘This is going to muck up my Everest trip’.”

And as for his injuries, he joked: “I’ve had worse cuts shaving.”

As well as a badly battered face, Adam broke his back in three places - though he’s not been confined to a wheelchair.

If he broke his back in multiple places, that sounds like compression fractures. I suffered one in high school, along with a broken pelvis, after falling about 20 feet into a concrete sewage culvert. The pelvis hurt much, much more.

I thought at the time—and I still do—that but for the grace of God I should have died. The paramedics did too. I wonder what Adam Potter is thinking.