Ski selfie: a dangerous new holiday habit?

Photo: Howellsoutdoors

The schoolboy, who is aged 14, was on a trip with his class from Leeds to the Molltaler Gletscher resort in the Austrian Alps. At the top of the 10,242-foot tall mountain Scharek, he decided to take a selfie. After stepping backwards, though, he found himself slipping and falling 1,640 feet.

The boy lucily escaped with only bumps and bruises, reported The Mirror, thanks to his falling at the relatively gentle angle of 40 degrees.

“He remained in contact with the slope, almost certainly saving his life," one emergency rescue spokesman told the paper. "It was certainly a miracle for him."

He is not alone, though: The Telegraph reports that a second selfie-related incident took place within the past week in Wyoming, where a 28-year-old Australian skier ducked under a boundary rope to take a coop photo - only to fall 1,000 feet. He also survived.

The trend arrives hot on the heels of research by law firm Irwin Mitchell, which found that more than half (52 per cent) of the injuries sustained on skiing holidays by Brits happened while not skiing on the slopes at all.

15.2 per cent of accidents taking place involving a ski lift, says the firm,

When skiing, respondents cited factors that caused their accidents as going too fast on the slopes (27.5 per cent), a lack of experience, practice or training (23.5 per cent), fault of another skier/snowboarder (20.3 per cent), collision with another skier/snowboarder (17 per cent) or bad terrain (17 per cent).