A female tourist survived a seven-meter fall into a quarry in Nizhny Tagil after losing her footing while trying to take a selfie.
The young woman was hiking with a group of friends when she stepped away from the party to take a photograph of herself near the rim. She slipped at the edge of the drop and tumbled into the pit, falling approximately 23 feet down the steep rock face before coming to a stop.
Rescuers said the hiker was stopped by the quarry's first rock ledge, an impact that emergency personnel noted saved her life. Trapped on the narrow outcrop, she was unable to climb back up the cliff face or scramble down to safety on her own.
Emergency rope rescue operation
Emergency teams were called to the site to extract the stranded hiker. According to regional news outlet Tagilcity.ru, which cited the municipal Center for Population Protection, specialists used climbing equipment and technical rope rigging to rappel down the rock face to reach her. The entire evacuation operation took approximately one hour.
Medical personnel who examined the woman at the scene found that she had suffered no broken bones or other serious injuries despite the long plunge.
Quarry hazards and tourist safety
Nizhny Tagil is an industrial city in Russia's Sverdlovsk region, situated east of the Ural Mountains divide. Decades of heavy mining and quarrying across the mineral-rich Ural district have left numerous deep stone pits and steep excavations throughout the countryside, which frequently attract hikers, walkers, and amateur photographers.
Emergency specialists have repeatedly warned outdoor enthusiasts about the hidden dangers of quarry perimeters and natural cliffs, where loose shale, gravel, and eroded margins can collapse underfoot. Looking at a mobile screen while posing for pictures close to a precipice further impairs depth perception and footing.
The incident in Nizhny Tagil comes after another cliff fall in the southern Russian resort town of Gelendzhik, where a visitor tumbled over a cliff edge while attempting to take a picture, an accident that was captured on video.
