Man Decides To Go Paragliding—and It Backfires but Not in the Way You Think

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Alice Gibbs is a Newsweek Senior Internet Trends & Culture Reporter based in the U.K. For the last two years she has specialized in viral trends and internet news, with a particular focus on animals, human interest stories, health, and lifestyle. Alice joined Newsweek in 2022 and previously wrote for The Observer, Independent, Dazed Digital and Gizmodo. Languages: English. You can get in touch with Alice by emailing alice.gibbs@newsweek.com.

Alice Gibbs

Senior Life and Trends Reporter

A viral video has shared the moment a thrill-seeker left his mom terrified when his paragliding adventure backfired.

Micah Cruver was visiting Medellín, Colombia, when he and some friends decided to paraglide off a mountaintop overlooking the city.

“I was chatting with my mom on the phone, and had just mentioned it in passing, something along the lines of ‘oh yeah, it’s a pretty chill day: we just had some lunch at my favorite brunch spot, and are about to go paragliding,’ which elicited the expected Mom response of ‘WHAT?! I really wish you weren’t, please call me when you’re done,'” Cruver told Newsweek.

But he never made that follow-up call—at least, not right away. Instead, his iPhone, left in his pocket during the glide, slipped out mid-flight and plummeted to the ground.

Unbeknownst to him, Apple’s crash detection feature interpreted the impact as a severe accident and automatically sent a distress message to his emergency contacts, including his friend Burke Bryant, who runs a disaster relief organization. “David, a buddy of mine who was on the ground, laughed and mentioned that Burke was blowing his phone up while I was in the air about how he received a text message that I was in a crash in Colombia, and that Burke was already gearing up to fly out and scrape me off a mountainside,” Cruver said.

The situation took a darker turn when Cruver remembered another key detail: “I couldn’t shake this sinking feeling though, as I could have sworn I had my mom listed as an emergency contact too.”

Indeed, the message had reached his mother. “She recalls getting the text, and springing into action mode: spending the next 30 minutes calling my family members and looking up every Colombian paragliding company she could find,” Cruver said. “After realizing they all only spoke Spanish on the phone: she jumped onto WhatsApp for texting them with Google Translate.”

Apple’s Crash Detection is a safety feature designed to automatically detect car crashes and alert emergency services and emergency contacts. Introduced in September 2022, it has been praised by users who have even credited the software with saving lives.

When Cruver finally called his mom from a friend’s phone, her initial relief quickly gave way to emotion. “She swears she was calm and collected, but what I remember: when she initially picked up the phone from a random number calling her, let’s just say she was… emotionally invested in the moment,” he said.

Internet Reacts

Cruver later shared the story on Instagram where the video has gained 2.9 million views.

“Once I got back, it felt like it was just too good of a story to not share,” he said. “As somebody who puts endless hours of work into meticulously editing and curating the content I post (as a commercial photographer, this comes with the territory), this low-effort reel that took all of 30 seconds to make seemed to strike a universal chord.”

The online response was overwhelming. The comments started flooding in from mothers, “I think I can speak for mothers everywhere when I say WHAT THE ACTUAL F***, son.” @thegildedkraken wrote. “I would have needed those emergency services if I scared my mom like that,” commented @rizzoleigh.

The experience has served as a lesson. “Admittedly, it still was really dumb of me to forget it in my pocket, as the paragliding company told us all to leave that stuff on the ground for that exact reason,” he said.

His mom has thankfully now forgiven him for the ordeal. After apologizing profusely, Cruver joked: “She thanked me for still being alive, to which I responded ‘Hey, it’s the least I could do.'”

Despite the chaos, he embraced an unintended benefit: “I didn’t end up buying a new phone for the next week until returning to the States, and the running joke among us was ‘oh look at Micah over there, no phone, just sitting there being mindful.’ It was a surprisingly peaceful tech detox,” he said.

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