[imagesource: YouTube / Kevin Philipp]

You get escapes, you get narrow escapes, and then you get paraglider Kevin Philipp’s last-second life-saving escape.

The adventurer / world traveller / cross country and acrobatic paraglider (via his Instagram bio) has shared how he dodged death at the very last moment during a recent flight.

Acrobatic paragliding is the freestyle and most extreme form of paragliding and can be considered anything from a wingover to infinity tumbling.

In Philipp’s case, his trick in strong turbulence went very, very wrong.

Watch the first few seconds of this video to see the speed with which he was plummeting towards the ground:

 

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A post shared by K e v i n . P h i l i p p (@kevin.philipp)

The full video has been uploaded to his YouTube channel with this description:

Break line got stuck. Falling into the lines and wing made the rescue parachute throw quite hard. The falling speed increased a lot due to the twisting wing. Very last chance was to manually open the rescue package. Estimated time left about 1 second.

This was not the day to die! Thanks!!! In acro paragliding we face a lot of tries and errors in learning the tricks. With 2-3 rescue parachutes and a lot of height we can safely train this kind of sport. This occasion is quite unlucky and rare. Just to keep in mind. Fly high, land safe.

I guess it’s a safe landing in that he didn’t die but it was a close-run thing:

I would be necking a few very stiff drinks to soothe my nerves.

On the flipside, when it’s done right, acrobatic paragliding does look like a good time:

 

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A post shared by K e v i n . P h i l i p p (@kevin.philipp)

[source:youtube]