Hang Gliding Noob Hangs On For Dear Life After Instructor Fails To Attach His Harness

I think we have all seen or at least heard of situations where people exhibit “superhuman” strength in situations where their adrenaline is flowing and it’s basically required for survival. This video features one of those moments caught on video, and we thought you guys would be as blown away by it as we were.

The star of this video is Chris Gursky, a Florida auto parts store manager on vacation in Switzerland. He had signed up for a hang gliding session with a local instructor who presumably would have him soaring high above the picturesque Swiss countryside, taking in the views and enjoying the wind in his face. What happened, instead, was just over two minutes of quite literally hanging on for dear life.

As you’ll see if you hit the play button on the video below, the instructor forgot to latch Gursky’s harness to the frame of the hang glider, which meant the only thing keeping him hanging on was his own two hands, and as you can imagine, that quickly became a struggle. I challenge any of you (no, not you crossfit athletes, you guys are cheaters!) to grab a metal bar and hold yourself off the ground using nothing but your grip strength for over two minutes. I’m sure some of you will make it, but a lot of us wouldn’t even be close, which means we would have plummeted to almost certain death.

Chris managed to hang on long enough for the pilot to clear a large area of trees below and maneuver to an open landing area, where he brought the glider down and gave Gursky the softest landing possible, given the circumstances. Gursky suffered a broken wrist in the landing the required surgery and some fancy new hardware and a torn biceps muscle from hanging on for dear life, but considering at one point he was dangling precariously several hundred feet above the ground, we’d have to say that was a pretty small price to pay to be able to survive this harrowing incident.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3pQaQYVDr0