The sun had long set, temperatures were dropping on Grouse Mountain, and Gerald Yang was wedged against a tree jutting out from a steep slope, staring down at a likely fatal 30-metre drop to rocks below.

He watched anxiously as the North Shore Rescue helicopter searching for him passed over and disappeared.

He couldn’t call again. His iPhone — and its integrated flashlight he’d tried to use to signal them — had died just seconds before the helicopter came into sight.

The 23-year-old Coquitlam man had already escaped death minutes before, when he fell 30 metres before having his descent stopped by the tree. But his mortality was front of mind.

“In the moment, my survival instincts were just going off. I was like, ‘OK, no, I do not want to die. I do not want to die. I want to live,'” he

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