A man has given a lesson is how not to take drone selfies after sharing his shocking video on Facebook.
The man, who we know only as John, was hiking in the Pisgah national forest in North Carolina when he decided to take a drone selfie, because what better way to take in the beautiful views?
John sent the drone off into the air to capture the moment, but a few seconds later his phone slipped on the steep incline of the hill they were sitting on, and of course, the entire thing was caught on camera.
He began to scramble his way down the hill in a bid to grab his phone, but quickly realised it was an impossible feat, as he stood and watched his phone disappear.
Describing his mishap on Facebook, John wrote:
You are supposed to secure your phone in the DJI remote control unit. Someone was in a hurry (me) and did not take this step.
As I sent the drone off for a selfie, I sat the phone down beside me on a steep incline. It was a little too steep and the phone took off for the cliff lick-ity split.
Your natural inclination is to try and grab your $800 Samsung S8 before it goes off a 1000-foot cliff. However, as you can see in the video, this did not work out well.
Luckily, I realized very quickly that my life was worth more than the phone (along with my friends screaming in the background to stop). Hence, I am here to tell this tale.
While it sounds like a pretty disastrous chain of events, the story had a pretty decent ending for John, who was reunited with his phone, and got some funny footage out of it too.
He continued:
Once the shock wore off a little, I asked a friend to call the phone in hopes someone at the bottom (this is a climbing area) might answer.
To my amazement we heard the phone ringing. Hiking with me this day, I had a good friend who is a paramedic and rescue trained instructor. He was carrying his gear for practice and guess what? He had an evacuation rope with him. He and I are both old rock climbers. So, I roped up and he belay-ed me out to the edge.
I had someone call the phone again and pin pointed that the phone was caught on the lip of a ledge about twenty feet down the face. Secured by the rope and my friend belay-ing me, I climbed down the short distance, snatched the phone and climbed back up.
John shared the video on his Facebook page JohnLikes2Travel, where he revealed the drone used in the clip was his third, explaining ‘I decided to take my latest drone with me, number three as my last one was taken at gun point in Jordan last month, but that’s another story.’ Please, tell us more, John.
If you have a story you want to tell send it to UNILAD via story@unilad.com
Emma Rosemurgey is an NCTJ trained Journalist who started her career by producing The Royal Rosemurgey newspaper in 2004, which kept her family up to date with the goings on of her sleepy north east village. She graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and started her career in regional newspapers before joining Tyla (formerly Pretty 52) in 2017, and progressing onto UNILAD in 2019.