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Mount Timpanogos, UT (CNN) — A Utah man is thanking his lucky stars that he is alive and well after skiing off a 150-foot cliff.
Devin Stratton was back-country skiing with his friend Matthew Reeves when Stratton took an enormous fall.
“I was going over some jumps seeing these tracks thinking it’s all good,” Stratton said, “then I hit a jump at the edge of the cliff and realize it’s a cliff.”
The skiier said he thought he was going to be paralyzed, and then dead when he noticed how large the drop was.
Stratton fell freely for 3.08 seconds in a drop that he guessed was more than 100 feet before crashing into the snow.
“In the air i definitely said a prayer it doesn’t sound like it, but I did in my head,” Stratton said.
Reeves said he had to process how his friend had not died in the fall. “The thing was mammoth,” Reeves said of the fall.
Immediately after the fall, Stratton said to the video camera used to record his skiing that his back and ribs hurt a little.
His helmet likely saved his life. “My helmet has a little chip there, I think it’s a really good thing I had this on because that’s one of t first things that hit was my head,” Stratton said. “It’s a miracle I didn’t get hurt.”
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