BBC News, Yorkshire
SRMRTA man who fell 40ft (12m) after slipping on a footpath at a North Yorkshire beauty spot has said medics “couldn’t believe” he survived without significant injuries.
Marshall Hoyle, from Hull, fell from the path at Beck Hole, near Thomason Foss waterfall, on Saturday.
He was rescued by members of the Scarborough and Ryedale Mountain Rescue Team (SRMRT) before being taken to hospital where he was treated for cuts and bruises.
Thanking the volunteers, his mother, Kayleigh Hoyle said: “If they weren’t there, what would have happened? You just don’t know, do you?”
Marshall said a friend who had witnessed the fall said he had landed on a thick tree branch with boulders beneath it.
“I snapped it clean in half,” he said.
“If that wasn’t there we wouldn’t be having this conversation now, without a doubt.”
Recalling the incident, Marshall added: “The last thing I remember was grabbing onto the floor and anything I could get my hands on, falling for a split second and then waking up with a local holding my neck in place just in case it was broken.”
He said he had felt “pure relief” when the first emergency responders arrived, saying members of the SRMRT had been “so helpful, talking to me, having a bit of a laugh”.
After undergoing a series of scans in hospital, he said medics “couldn’t believe that I haven’t broken one bone”.
SuppliedMrs Hoyle said when her son had called her from hospital at first she thought he was joking but when she realised he was not said she and her husband “were just sat at home in sheer terror really, fearing the worst.”
She said it had been an emotional ordeal, saying: “You don’t ever think about your children falling 40ft.”
A spokesperson for SRMRT said members had arrived on the scene at about 15:10 BST to provide an initial assessment and medical treatment before paramedics arrived.
They said it had been a “difficult extraction down stream, then up out of the steep gorge,” adding that they wished Marshall a “speedy recovery”.