TikTok star Jason Clark 'close to dying' in botched stunt
A TikTok star has revealed he came close to death filming a stunt involving swimming under a sheet of ice.
Jason Clark, who runs a number of social media accounts under To Do List Adventures, recently tried swimming under a frozen lake at Laketown in the US state of Utah.
While Mr Clark, who has more than 32,000 followers on Instagram, revealed the stunt, which involved swimming under the lake between two designated points, nearly killed him.
In video uploaded to Mr Clark’s Instagram account, he’s seen struggling in the freezing waters of Bear Lake.
Mr Clark dives under the ice and swims a few metres. He then begins touching the surface appearing to panic.
Turning back, he searches for an escape but he’s unable to find one. He then changes direction and finally manages to find where he dived in, and resurfaces.
Freezing and drenched, he pants heavily – completely horrified as to how close the lake could have turned into his icy tomb.
A separate video shows him speaking to the woman filming him in the aftermath.
“I seriously almost f****** died,” he says.
“I almost didn’t make it.”
A woman asks him, “you couldn’t find the hole?” to which he responds, “I couldn’t”.
“You need to go back inside. You’re going to get hypothermia,” she says.
Mr Clarke suggests he’ll “try again”.
Close to death in the icy depths
He wrote on the video on Instagram he’s “never been this close to dying”.
“I didn’t think my eyeballs would freeze so quick,” he wrote.
“The surface of the water where the hole was didn’t look any different than the bottom of the ice.
“When I flipped around and felt solid ice I thought I was at the hole.”
Mr Clarke wrote he tried to find his path back to where he started by following a trail of dust he’d kicked up from the lakebed.
But it led him further away. He tried breaking the ice with his back but to no avail.
“I was so short on breath I couldn’t really see anymore,” he wrote.
“I had accepted that was it and I wasn’t going to make it. I swung my hand at what I thought was just a lighter spot of ice and my hand came through.
“I then got a tonne of energy to stand up. It took two to three breaths to regain my vision after resurfacing.”
‘Sick to the stomach’
People on Instagram were horrified by the video.
“Please don't ever do that again,” one woman wrote.
“You were clearly drowning. Please please Don't do this again. Others may see it and try it. Last thing we want is a death as a result.”
Another woman added the video made her “sick to the stomach” while another wrote it gave her “so much anxiety”.
One man wrote Mr Clarke is “lucky to be alive”.
“I have heart palpitations every time I watch this,” he wrote.
Others were less sympathetic and more critical of Mr Clarke’s decision to swim in the frozen lake.
One man wrote, “this is just stupid”.
“What the f*** is wrong with you?” another man wrote.
Another man wrote it “may be the stupidest thing” he’s seen.
“You need psychological help for sure,” one woman wrote.
Another video revealed Mr Clarke was successful in his second attempt at swimming the lake.
Do you have a story tip? Email: newsroomau@yahoonews.com.
You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and download the Yahoo News app from the App Store or Google Play.
