Hiker’s Own 360-Degree Camera Catches Hopeless Slide Down Mountain and the One Moment That Saved Him

A hiker caught his own slide down a mountain on a 360-degree camera, also inadvertently recording the moment his life was saved by an object in the landscape.

The close call happened Sept. 16 in China‘s Anhui province.

Yang Meng, 42, was hiking up one of the province’s mountains in wet conditions when he slipped and soon realized he was in big trouble.

The hiker, who was equipped with a 360-degree camera, found he couldn’t right himself as kept sliding down the rain-slicked rock.

“I realized I couldn’t get up at all and was sliding faster and faster, that’s when it hit me: I must be falling off a cliff,” Meng told CNN.

The danger was clear.

The peaks of Anhui are wildly different from the terrain most Americans are used to, even those in the Rocky Mountains. While some are small and easy to summit, others tower almost directly upwards from the ground of this eastern Chinese province.

Video shows a severe landscape that can be found in Anhui.

Trip to wonderland! Let the train take you to the stunning Xihai Great Canyon of Yellow Mountain in E China’s Anhui pic.twitter.com/r0O4qYq9tw

— People’s Daily, China (@PDChina) December 14, 2019

Yang’s own camera showed his environment was not as radical as that on the video above, but his slide hints that this was anything but an easy or safe climb.

In his video, the only thing that seemed to save his life as he gathered speed was, from the camera’s perspective, a rapidly-approaching tree jutting from the mountainside.

He hit the tree and the brush around it with tremendous speed, leading to pain for the hiker, but a chance to walk off the mountain alive.

“When I hit the tree,” he told CNN, “it felt like a heavy rock crashing down. I was just thinking, ‘There’s no way I’m dead.’”

In the video below, the hiker’s slip, slide and sudden arrest can be seen.

In China, 42-year-old Yang Meng was hiking with his son when he slipped and nearly fell off a cliff

He survived by a miracle, as he managed to grab onto a tree that stopped his fall. The lucky man escaped with only a few scratches. pic.twitter.com/sjXgxyPWdg

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) September 22, 2024

The video has racked up hundreds of thousands of views on social media.

After Yang stopped, the camera panned to show even more downhill drops just beyond the bit of brush that halted his slide. If those plants were not present, it’s likely he would have suffered severe injuries or even death.

The hiker said his injuries were minor, amounting to “a little scrape on my left hand and a small cut on my thigh.”

This near-fatal slip left Yang thankful for his time after the accident.

“Life is really short, so we need to cherish every day,” he said. “I won’t let this incident hold me back. If anything, it’s pushing me to explore the world even more.”

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