Adam Potter slipped over the edge of one of the steepest ridges in the Highlands suffering just minor injuries

Adam Potter had only just suggested getting out the crampons and ice-axes when his feet skidded under him on the snow, and he slipped over the edge of one of the steepest mountain ridges in the Highlands.

In seconds he fell 300m (about 1,000 ft) down the side of Sgurr Choinnich Mor, gathering pace as he fell. He tumbled down a rough scree slope – fortunately cushioned by deep snow - and bounced over three cliffs, each perhaps a hundred feet high, scattering his kit behind him. His body twisted, heels over head. Miraculously, Potter survived. He came to rest 800m above sea level with a skinned and bloodied face, whiplash, back injuries and wrenched shoulders, when his downwards momentum was finally arrested by a boulder. He thinks the rock briefly knocked him out.

But then he stood up, gathered up his kit, opened his map and watched as a Royal Navy rescue helicopter hovered briefly then sped off to search for the mountaineer the rescue team had assumed must be severely injured or dead.

"I was lucky to survive one cliff, let alone all three," he told the Guardian this afternoon, as he recuperated in the Southern General hospital in Glasgow. "I don't remember the first two cliffs; I remember the last and I could see what was coming and at that point, I thought it was the end."

Potter, a landfill manager living in Glasgow, is an experienced mountaineer and adventure sports enthusiast. Formerly based in Sheffield, he has tackled peaks across the UK and the Himalayas, is a practised kayaker and endurance athlete.

So Saturday's expedition with his girlfriend Kate Berry, 30, and two other friends and his dog to climb Sgurr Choinnich Mor, a steep mountain 1,094m (3,589ft) high about five miles east of Ben Nevis on the Grey Corries ridge, should have been straightforward.

The weather was perfect for climbing and the snow on the ridge seemed soft and easy to tackle, he said. The name means "Big rocky peak of the moss" in Gaelic. Mountain guides describe it as "uncomplicated".

"We were on this ridge at the top and literally, I had just said 'It's getting a bit icier now, let's get our crampons on and our ice axes out'. I set out for a rock about five metres away and just as I started walking I slipped. Up to that point, the snow had been quite soft," he said.

He fell off with his ice axe tied to the back of his rucksack. "I remember at the start of it, from when I first slipped, trying to slow my speed; trying to slow myself down so I could hopefully stop. Every time I started to slow myself down I would go over a cliff and pick up speed again and as this process continued, I just kept going."

After rolling and bouncing down the mountain, scrabbling desperately to bring himself to a stop with his hands, feet and snow poles, his momentum was finally slowed by a shallower slope: "Eventually I came to a stop. I was using everything: my feet, my hands, and I came to a stop. I think I was knocked out briefly."

His rescuers were amazed he had survived. The Royal Navy search and rescue helicopter based at Prestwick 100 miles to the south in Ayrshire, had diverted from a training exercise after being alerted at 2.30pm on Saturday. They feared they would find him injured or dead.

When they saw Potter, standing in the snow, apparently uninjured and reading a map, they assumed he was someone else, and flew on.

Lieutenant Tim Barker, the observer on the Royal Navy Sea King, said: "We began to hover-taxi down the slope and spotted a man at the bottom, standing up.

"We honestly thought it couldn't have been him, as he was on his feet, reading a map. Above him was a series of three high craggy outcrops.

"It seemed impossible. So we retraced our path back up the mountain and, sure enough, there were bits of his kit in a vertical line all the way up where he had obviously lost them during the fall. It was quite incredible. He must have literally glanced off the outcrops as he fell, almost flying."

Guided by his friends pointing down at him from the peak and the trail left by the equipment, the helicopter team flew back and winched him aboard. According to Barker, Potter was "shaking from extreme emotional shock and the sheer relief at still being alive".

Barker said: "It's hard to believe that someone could have fallen that distance on that terrain and been able to stand up at the end of it, let alone chat to us in the helicopter on the way to the hospital. Really an amazing result — I have to say, when we got the call and realised the details of where he'd fallen, we did expect to arrive on scene to find the worst-case scenario."

John Stevenson, team leader for Lochaber mountain rescue, a man with hard-won experience dealing with the appalling accidents and injuries suffered by mountaineers and ice climbers around Ben Nevis, said: "He's a very, very lucky man. The snow must have helped cushion his fall."

There were 27 fatal falls by climbers on Scottish mountains in 2009, against 20 in 2008.

Stevenson added: "Ironically it was probably the snow that caused him to slip but it has saved his life." But despite surviving one of the most extreme falls seen by Highland rescue teams, Potter isn't planning to take it easy. In eight weeks he is scheduled to head out on a 10-week mission to another testing peak: Everest.

He said today: "I'm hoping my injuries will have healed by then."

Other great escapes



• In May 2003, Aron Lee Ralston escaped death by cutting his arm off with a penknife after he was trapped by a boulder while climbing. His autobiography inspired the 2010 film 127 Hours.

• Touching the Void, a 2003 film based on a 1988 book, told of Joe Simpson's escape from a crevasse in the Peruvian Andes after his friend and climbing partner was forced to cut the rope connecting them, assuming he was dead. With a broken leg, no food and almost no water, Simpson spent three days crawling and hopping five miles back to base camp.

• In October 1972, a charter flight crashed high in the Andes. More than a quarter of the 45 passengers died immediately, and eight more in an avalanche. The outside world only learned of the 16 survivors 72 days later, when two of the passengers trekked through the icy mountains to find help. The story of how they survived by eating the flesh of the dead inspired several books and two films.

• In an avalanche in 2009 on Beinn Eighe in the Torridon area of the Highlands of Scotland, a climber's fall was broken by the propellor of a plane which had crashed on the mountain more than half a century earlier. The climber was badly injured but survived.

• In 2006, a British climber fell more than 40 metres down the 1,000-metre, near-vertical Troll Wall in Norway, and was lying unconscious on a ledge. He was rescued by helicopter because the accident was spotted through a telescope by an observer more than three miles away. Michael Garton was left paralysed, but a year later was pushed and dragged by his friends in his wheelchair to the summit of Snowdon.

• In 2008 a Japanese climber, Hideaki Nara, survived on Mount Cook in New Zealand by digging a small ice cave with a knife and a ballpoint pen, after his companion and their tent were buried in an ice fall.

• In June 2010 Bill and Dotty Bradley survived a 100-metre fall into a Welsh ravine in their BMW convertible, which ended up on four wheels in a pool below a waterfall. They were unscathed.

Maev Kennedy

• This article was amended on 31 January 2011. The original referred to Ben Eighe in Moray. This has been corrected.