close calls

[Dan_Harris]

I was heading up Mount Conness in NE Yosemite. Had crossed Conness Glacier and made it past the huge moat. It was now a scaramble up some decomposed granite. We were unroped and crampons were off as it was about maybe 10 - 15 ft of climbing. I had one more move to be over the crux and then it was basically a walk up. I went to kick into the gravel for a last push and my foot bounced off the water ice hidden under the decomposed granite. I started sliding down toward the schrund. Managed to get my foot on a large rock I had used earlier and stop myself. Scrambled back down. I was pretty scraped up, ripped up pants and shirt, up but no worse for the wear, but my friend was pretty shook. All he could think of was me hurtling into the gap.

[MtnHigh]

At age 16 I hit a car broadside while on my motorcycle going about 45mph. I flew through the air head first over the top of the car, while the bike remained impaled into the side of the car. I skidded to a stop in the middle of the street 25 feet from the car I hit. Luckily I didn't hold tight onto the handlebars and that no other cars where coming the other direction. Walked away from it only bruised and scraped. The bike didn't fare so well.

[minx]

ran with scissors once, went out in the rain w/o my jacket once.

 

got slammed by my horse face first into a solid fence....don't remember many many many hours after that. ended up a few minutes ahead of an avalanche. had my little VW run over by semi.....ouch! college drinking...too many incidents to count. i'm just a walking disaster.

[Bug]

You scare me.

[tomtom]

The condom came off before I did.

[rr666]

any little tomtom's running around?

 

Drove off the road and almost hit a cow after driving through a barbed wire fence (I grew up in a small town).

 

Push my hand through a glass door as a kid as my brother slammed it in my face, sliced up my wrist pretty good, got lucky none of the big blood vessels or tendons got cut. Still lots of blood everywhere.

[jlag]

I was at Smith a few years ago hanging with the Outward Bound crew climbing Heinous. Ty got involved in a serious conversation as he was tying his figure 8 follow thru and never followed thru. About 30 feet off the deck the wind blew hard and pulled his rope out from his harness. He's hanging on realizing that there's no way to downclimb and decides to jump for it. Bean steps up and catches him like you cradle a baby and slams into the ground. Minor bruising and a little rattled but basically saved him from ankle\tailbone injury if not more. Pretty scary stuff.

[bunglehead]

ran with scissors once, went out in the rain w/o my jacket once.

 

got slammed by my horse face first into a solid fence....don't remember many many many hours after that. ended up a few minutes ahead of an avalanche. had my little VW run over by semi.....ouch! college drinking...too many incidents to count. i'm just a walking disaster.

 

College drinking rocks!! I see it every Firday night, and it's an awesome sight.

 

I've posted this before but here goes again. One time I was climbing Shamu at Smiffy, got to the chains and as I was setting up my rappel, noticed I hadn't doubled back. Bad news. Glad I noticed before I leaned back.

[catbirdseat]

At age 16 I hit a car broadside while on my motorcycle going about 45mph. I flew through the air head first over the top of the car, while the bike remained impaled into the side of the car. I skidded to a stop in the middle of the street 25 feet from the car I hit. Luckily I didn't hold tight onto the handlebars and that no other cars where coming the other direction. Walked away from it only bruised and scraped. The bike didn't fare so well.

I once met a young man working at the lumber yard who had almost the same accident as you. He was riding his motorcycle down Bayview Drive in Corona del Mar. A car pulled out of the parking lot at the Balboa Yacht Club. He hit the car and launched. His helmet, which was a full wrap around model, hit something hard. The edge of it gouged into his neck. The torque pulled the nerves right out of the spine in such a way that they never grew back. The fellow was thus left with a completely useless arm for the rest of his life.

[fern]

I turned the wrong way onto a one way street ... no shit I coulda died

[Bronco]

I did the same thing right after arriving in Dublin. Those hosers all drive on the wrong side of the road!

[sketchfest]

Some pretty stupid ones in college, but the “CC” that stands out most was a couple of years ago on my first summit on Rainier. My partner and I had climbed Gib Ledges and were making our way back down from the summit. At the upper entrance to the ledges the snow had gotten very soft and slushy making each step a bit of a slide fest. I had just put my left foot down and was preparing to put my right foot down when my left slid about a foot throwing me off balance. As I caught myself, I didn’t realize that the front points of my right foot had speared into the bail of my left foot, when I tried to take another step all I managed to do was fall forward in what must have appeared to be the one of the goofiest summersaults ever attempted. The slope was so steep that I managed to complete the entire flip and land squarely on my ass like I was sitting down and taking a break. After the fear sweat subsided we continued our rather uneventful descent to Muir, where I made a beeline straight to the crapper to empty my severely watery bowels.

[willstrickland]

Climbing in the Wallowas with Terminal Gravity and Wes: Leading the second section of a waterfall route that is rapidly melting out and deteriorating. A large missing section of ice, no pro, and ridiculous hard drytooling to get by the missing ice dictated a retreat. "This thing is half the size it was yesterday" TG comments. I make a traverse to an adjacent anchor the left. Partners follow and rap. I rap last. Just as I touch down on the slope at the base a large section of the falls cuts loose from the top. I'm still attached to the ropes. Ice hits halfway down the climb and turns into two big pieces and alot of small ones. I'm rapping the remainder of the rope down the snow slope as fast as I can and trying to get a bead on the big pieces. They come zooming through and I duck/dive to one side, everything missed me except one basketball sized chunk I took in the shoulder.

 

Laying at the base of Lurking Fear waiting for some Spaniards to clear the 2nd pitch I hear something whizzing. A #5 stopper impacts the talus a foot from us. Five minutes later a tube of lip balm smacks one of us in the hand. Five miunutes later, I'm laying on my back watching this guy stick clipping above the windowpane pendo. Then I notice that his 8 ft extendable painters pole, extended to about 15 feet was wobbling. Then I noticed that it was wobbling because it was falling. "HOLY SHIT MOOOVVVVEEEE!!! MOOOOVEEEE!!!" I'm screaming while running/tripping. Everyone scatters and this javelin comes down in the middle of where we had been sitting, hits a piece of talus and ricochets off in an arc into the canopy of an adjacent tree.

 

We decided there was NFW we were going to be behind/under these jokers for the next couple of days and grabbed the bags and got outta dodge.

[cracked]

So this one time, I was like climbing, and stuff, and my bro's all like "dude, let's go climb that!" and he sets up a TR and we climb and like lower off and then I notice he like set the TR up with the rope going over a rap sling and stuff! And I'm like "Dude, we're gonna DIE!"

 

It was like extream and like stuff, you know?

[vegetablebelay]

A couple of years back I was up ice climbing in Lillooet with a ropegun/partner from this site. We'd climbed up the first mellow pitch of Shriek of the Sheep and were waiting off to the side for a party in front of us to complete the harder, second pitch. The second was climbing and midway up the pitch he starts yelling at us, ICE! ICE! ICE! and we were puzzled at why he'd be yelling when we were so far away. That's when we heard the incoming chunk and most of us sitting there dove out of the way, but my partner didn't and it hit him directly on the helmet with a huge noise. It had come out of nowhere away from the climb. He was pretty woozy and an inch or two shorter, but lucky it didn't hit him in the shoulder. I was lucky it didn't hit me.

[Dustin_B]

Remember that presidential election back in 2000? sheesh, that was a close one. we should all be thanking our lucky stars for that near miss...

[catbirdseat]

So this one time, I was like climbing, and stuff, and my bro's all like "dude, let's go climb that!" and he sets up a TR and we climb and like lower off and then I notice he like set the TR up with the rope going over a rap sling and stuff! And I'm like "Dude, we're gonna DIE!"

Something just like that happened to me, but then I woke up in a sweat. I had dreamt the whole thing.

[ScottP]

While diving a PBM-4 wreck in the south end of Lake Washington at about 75 feet, I stuck most of my body into the forward hatch that accesses the nose turret and the passage through the forward bulkhead to the galley. (The plane was lying on it's back so orientation was screwy.) I moved down into the nose turret to see if I could feel the 30 caliber gun that was supposed to be there. The silt immediately put the visibility at pitch black. After mucking aroung for a bit, I decided the gun wasn't there and started to back out. My 1st stage (behind my head) hung up on something, so I moved forward and tried again. Still stuck, I kept at it, each time moving slightly to one side or the other trying to bypass what was hanging me up. I couldn't see my gauges because I didn't have a light to charge up the phosphoresence, so I had no idea how much air I had. When the breaths started taking effort, I knew I was going to have to ditch my tank and try an emergency ascent without it. Fighting panic, I hit the shoulder buckle, then the waist buckle and shrugged out of the staps. Backing out with the regulator still in my mouth, I took one more long, labored pull and took the 2nd stage out of my mouth. As I backed out into the light, I gave one last tug on my regulator hose and damn if the system didn't come free. I put the 2nd stage back in my mouth, tucked the tank under my arm and headed for the surface.

I don't do wreck penetrations anymore.

PBM flying boat

[RuMR]

whoah! SKETCH!!!! Any buddies w/ you? Don't tell me you were down there solo!!?!?!?!?!??!

[ScottP]

No, I had a partner, but he kind of disappeared on me while I was head down in the muck.

[ivan]

I don't do penetrations anymore.

 

huh, huh...that was cool...

[catbirdseat]

Good story, Scott. You almost checked into Davy Jones Locker.

[Dru]

While diving a PBM-4 wreck in the south end of Lake Washington at about 75 feet, I stuck most of my body into the forward hatch that accesses the nose turret and the passage through the forward bulkhead to the galley. (The plane was lying on it's back so orientation was screwy.) I moved down into the nose turret to see if I could feel the 30 caliber gun that was supposed to be there. The silt immediately put the visibility at pitch black. After mucking aroung for a bit, I decided the gun wasn't there and started to back out. My 1st stage (behind my head) hung up on something, so I moved forward and tried again. Still stuck, I kept at it, each time moving slightly to one side or the other trying to bypass what was hanging me up. I couldn't see my gauges because I didn't have a light to charge up the phosphoresence, so I had no idea how much air I had. When the breaths started taking effort, I knew I was going to have to ditch my tank and try an emergency ascent without it. Fighting panic, I hit the shoulder buckle, then the waist buckle and shrugged out of the staps. Backing out with the regulator still in my mouth, I took one more long, labored pull and took the 2nd stage out of my mouth. As I backed out into the light, I gave one last tug on my regulator hose and damn if the system didn't come free. I put the 2nd stage back in my mouth, tucked the tank under my arm and headed for the surface.

I don't do wreck penetrations anymore.

PBM flying boat

 

...and i was just coming up to the surface when this water bomber picked me up, man! And like, then it dropped me on this forest fire! Whoah!

[Stefan]

As I was climbing the west side of Mt. Triumph at about 5800 feet (up the easy route) I layed my pack down on a large boulder. From here I took only the rope, some minor pro, and a water bottle to the top with my friend. About 400 feet above my pack and somewhat off to the south and about 15 minutes later we heard this incredible "WHACK" and then large crushing noises.

 

I look down to see snow cascading EVERYWHERE around my pack, and over my pack -- kind of like those huge cascade ice falls you can see on Johannesburg from Boston Basin.

 

A large snowfield on slabs/terraces was just released and we were about 15 minutes from being bombarded with large ice chunks.

 

Amazingly my pack was never hit, but the snow did slightly move the boulder the pack was resting on.

[plexus]

Climbed Sidewinder after making a mistake and thinking it was the Beckey route. I got a piece 10 feet up and a piece 5 feet below the anchor, 90-foot pitch!! Oh, I also stepped on my shoelace while doing it. Doh!

 

Almost killed my partner, stepped on a ledge the length of my arm from my elbow to hand, about half a foot deep, and it just completely broke off and missed his head by a foot. And I was the third person to use that ledge!! Also got hit by a snowslide earlier that climb and we had shit sluffing off all around us.

 

My friend almost kileld us on Hwy 20 going to do SilverStar, was going 60 mph, looking away when we came to one of those 20mph curves in front of solid rock!!

 

It's the driving that will kill you!!