It was his first day in Switzerland and his first time hang gliding. Everything was ready for takeoff – except for his safety harness.
Chris Gursky, of Florida, shared the video which shows the moment he and his pilot realized he was not secured to the glider and his 2 minutes and 14 seconds of sheer terror.
Gursky clings to the glider and pilot with only the strength of his fingers keeping him from plummeting to the ground below, the Daily Mail reports.
He holds tight even as the glider ascends up well above the tree line. The pilot appears to struggle to get the glider back down.
Gursky was finally able to let go as the glider neared a field.
The man tore his left bicep tendon and fractured his right wrist, Gizmodo reports.
“The landing was a rough one, but I lived to tell the story,” Gursky wrote in the caption of his YouTube video.
His death-defying experience has already been viewed more than a million times and has over 1,000 comments since it was uploaded Monday to his YouTube channel.