Tone Pogačnik from the town of Jesenice, a border town with Austria, was a talented cross-country skier who won ninth place as a member of Yugoslavia’s national ski relay team at the 1948 St. Moritz Winter Olympics. But what made his life story truly remarkable was a miraculous event that happened two years earlier.

In late April 1946, Pogačnik and other members of the Yugoslav ski team were training not far below the summit of Triglav, Slovenia’s highest mountain. Because it was quite late in the season, they had few other options but to practice their downhill skiing on a high-altitude glacier.

All went well until fog closed in on the glacier. At the time, Pogačnik was the only skier left on the slope. “I gained too much speed and tried to slow down by making a wide turn,” he recounted in an interview with the newspaper Slovenske novice. As he was completing the turn, he suddenly discovered that he no longer felt any ground beneath his skis. In the poor visibility, he had skied right of a ledge into a foggy void.

It turned out that Pogačnik had gone off the edge of Triglav’s North Face, a wall of sheer rock that rises almost vertically and has always been much feared among mountaineers. By a stroke of pure luck, he landed in a bank of snow – surrounded by large chunks of rock. He had fallen almost a hundred meters (more than 300 feet) from the ledge. When a rescue team reached him later that day, he was shivering – but unhurt.

Pogačnik died in June, 2013, at the age of 94.