Near Death Experiences

[chequita guevara]

Every so often, I think about the near misses in my life. There are the banal, not looking both ways while crossing a street after 3rd grade an nearly getting hit by a speeding car to almost drowning while being caught in a rip tide in Cancun, and then there's the wtf!?! category, like finding out that your occasional cab driver was a serial killer and learning that he wasn't targeting prostitutes, as they claimed on the local news.

Do you have a near death experience? If so, what was it? Do you know someone else's that you can share?

[Aeson]

I once posted on an internet forum where one of the moderators made a death threat against one of the posters.

[Krill]

Damn you Aeson you stole my line :irate:

[Aeson]

Once I was out hiking in Zion National Park, just up a side canyon up above the main canyon. It was 200-300 feet deep, and from 5-10 feet wide most places. There was a narrow part where most of it I could see was 2-3 feet wide, and then the canyon closed up completely just a few feet further on. Couldn't see all the way up due to overhangs and such. Rather than hike back, I stemmed up. It was a bit narrow there, hard to do. Then at one point it closed up almost completely directly overhead. There was a sloping ledge on one wall at the same height as an overhang on the other wall. Between the ledge and the overhang was about 8 inch gap. I could fit through, but the only way to do it was to stem using the back of my head/neck on the wall above the overhang, and my hands on the other wall below the ledge.

Once I had done that, I was sorta stuck. After pondering falling for a few seconds I figured I had to try something. I got my feet in a narrower part off to the side a bit, wedged them in, and then sorta hopped my way up, keeping from falling over by keeping the pressure on the back of my neck. I was up maybe 150 feet at that point.

... same climb, up near the top it was too wide to stem. There was a nearly vertical oblong rock, rather rounded, with a crack in it near the bottom. About 9 feet up to another ledge. The crack was wide enough at the bottom to get a foot in, but peterred out to nothing near the top. Had to bear hug the rock, and sorta inch my way up. It was a bit too wide for me to do it well. Could use the crack at the start, wedging the toe of my boot in, but it was useless once I got near the ledge. Had to reach up with one hand, which meant losing all grip with the other... so I got one hand up on the ledge and sorta swung out into space. My feet still had some grip around the rock, so it was only my upper body that swung... but it's an interesting sensation to see straight down a couple hundred feet, and only have one hand on a ledge with nothing much to grip other than loose sand. Kinda froze up for a second, then I remember thinking to myself very clearly, "I'm panicking. I'll die if I do that. If I don't swing back now I'm not going to be able to hold this any longer"... pushed off against the wall on my back and got my other hand up on the ledge to pull myself up.

The rest of the climb was rather uneventful, and up top it was very beautiful. A little fresh water tinja (sp?) mirroring the sky and the surrounding canyons. I stopped to just watch for a while... with my back to a ~15 foot rock wall. Heard something above me, looked up and saw a couple mountain goats glaring down at me, so I left the water to them.

[Aeson]

Damn you Aeson you stole my line :irate:

One time I pre-empted this guy's idea for a post and he got really irate at me. It was scary

[Cort Haus]

I've had loads of scrapes up in the hills / mountains. I was in the Lake District the other week on a ridge of fells in wind, horizontal rain and mist with about 10 yards visibility. We managed to avoid walking off the edge and tumbling down 2,700 feet but my GF slipped and hurt her leg. It wasn't clear at first whether she was able to walk on it. I couldn't have left here there to go for help (no mobile phone reception and over four hours walk from a phone), and there was unlikely to be anyone else walking past any time soon, who might have got help. Air-rescue would not have been possible anyway, because of the conditions. I thought for a moment that we were going to die of exposure up there together.

Fortunately, she was just badly bruised and able to hobble, with my support, and we very slowly descended the mountain. Once we got down, the six miles walk from there to the Inn where we were staying wasn't too bad. Never been so relieved to get back so safely. Well, not since the previous scary moment anyway.

[Traianvs]

My last one was during a skiing holiday in Les Menuires (les trois vallées for all you skiing fans like me).

I'm a fairly good skier but unfortunately my fellow snowboarders were a bunch of goddamn noobs. That's why I often had to wait for them to come down. After a while I got a bit careless and settled on a crest, or rather slightly lower down the slope, waiting for the rest together with a mate.

Anyone who's done a bit of skiing knows that's a foolish place to rest as people coming down only see people down there very late. It just happened by coincidence that two noob specimens managed to crash into eachother about 5 meters behind me, one being a skier and the other a snowboarder. As they came from two different directions they bumped into eachother and bounced off again. So, the boarder hurtled down at high velocity only half a meter on my right side but what's worse is the skier tumbled down with his two skis pointing forward a few cm to the left of my skull. I actually felt his right ski skim along my hair - I was almost decapitated

I know in the end the story isn't that spectacular though it was scary enough for me all the same .

[Traianvs]

Another recent one was after work around midnight in the weekend. I approached a roundabout by car and as usual I slowed down to check for cars having right of way. Also note that I had to come down to a standstill on quite a steep slope upwards.

Suddenly I see a ramshackle old vehicle racing towards the roundabout from the left (on high ground) at an estimated 100km/h more or less. Apparently he didn't know there was a roundabout, was dozing off or whatever because he made no inclination towards slowing down, but I realized that when it was too late for me to do anything. I have a sleazy old car myself and because I was on a slope I had little chance to accelerate quickly.

They guy finally noticed he was heading towards his doom and stepped on his brakes like crazy and had to deviate to the right where I was waiting to prevent him crashing in the roundabout wall. He made a few 360° spins in my direction and halted a few meters in front of me (it wasn't that close). I looked him in the eyes, amazed a bit, and noticed he was definately drugged with amfetamines or something similar, but he ignored me and went about his business like nothing happened.

Oh well, got lucky again.

[SpencerH]

One of the most unique (since this is rarely done anymore).

We were on an amphibious exercise. Some bright naval lad thought it made sense to climb over the side of the ship and down to the landing craft on netting a la WWII movies you've probably seen. That worked OK but then they realized that the 14 ft swells were a "tad" high for an amphibious landing. So they said everyone climb back up. By now the multi ton (50 ton ?) LC is happily banging into the side of the ship like a bell clapper and as evidence of the seriousness of situation one of the guide ropes that is holding the LC to the ship (about 6-8 in diameter) partially explodes under the stress. Now comes the fun part for me. You have to climb these things in groups and I'm one of the ends. My group is a little slow/seasick and I have to slow down so they can keep up as we ascend. Because of this I'm a little nonchalant and move my right hand and right foot at the same time (a cardinal climbing sin). At the same instant, the ship lurches sideways and I'm flung 180 degrees so I'm now facing away from the ship holding on with my left hand and foot. Of course the LC is merrily banging away against the ship side 30 ft below me. As I look up I see an African-American NCO who yells "hold on boy, hold on". I believe I said I would. Anyway the ship lurched back and I was flung back facing the ship. Needless to say, I said **** to waiting for the others and scampered up the net.

[Theben]

A few. The one that I remember the most was I was out drinking with a friend of mine (che should remember Carol). She started out really bummed and by the time we left she was in too good a mood. We were flying down a side road (her car) and there was a curve up ahead. We went off road and she missed a telephone pole by about 10 feet going 50 mph. Neither of us had seat belts on. Got back on the road and kept going.

Come to think of it, quite a few of my near death experiences involved that girl.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

When I was a kid, John Wayne Gacy sold Christmas trees at my church. What do I win?

[chequita guevara]

Our grandparents all lived in the same town as Gacy.

[Dinner]

Getting shot at is an eye opener.

[Krill]

Cracked my skull open as a toddler.

[Tuberski]

Ate a whole box of exlax when I was 4 or 5.

Nearly **** myself to death.

ACK!