Almost Dead

Every once in a while I get to retell the story of how I almost died. Well here we go again...

It was 1992 and the date was January 9th. It was a Saturday Morning. My partner and I had parked at Timberline Lodge at 11pm the night before and had spent the night time hours slogging up the lower slopes of Mt. Hood, up the ski slopes, past the warming hut, beyond the top of the Palmer Chair, then turning northwest we made our way to Illumination saddle.

At the saddle, a wind blasted notch between the summit ridges and a rocky horn, we met up with two other climbers. By 4am it was quite light out and we all began a slow descending traverse of the upper reaches of the Reid Glacier. The western side of the mountain, though easily viewed from Portland, is remote. It also takes the steady prevailing western winds, driven across 5,000 miles of ocean that would rage across the western face like sea spray. That day it was very calm and the winds were from the east. We could see spin drift blowing off the summit. Ice tinkled down around us.

There was a silence on this day. I could here my hart pounding in my chest and here the breath of others. That was about it. I had felt reasonably good all day and was feeling strong. The ice and snow was good. There had been an avalanche earlier and the loose snow was gone. We all moved up in two rope teams, toward icy cleft known as Leuthold Couloir. As we entered the fall line of the couloir we entered an ice stream ankle deep of near constant spin drift. The ice rang across my boots. The little ice stream had scoured a glass smooth surface and my crampon points didn't bite more than a few millimeters into the rock hard gray ice.

The other two climbers were well ahead of us when my first worries began. I had felt strong and was positive about reaching the summit. Then in an instant I came down with a bad case of mountain sickness. It was as if my world was ending. I had trouble moving up or down. We sat for a time on a mushroom of rime ice. It was turning into a beautiful day with a deep blue sky and gentle winds. With little wind it was getting steamy, not bad for January. But here I was almost unconscious. I lay with my head against my partner as he tried to revive me with juice, candy, none of it worked.

Finally as I lay flat on the rime ice, he carved a bollard and began the first of 8 repels down out of the couloir. I can't tell you how hard it is to lower a full grown man down 800 feet of ice, mainly because I did not have to do it. My partner did. I can tell you that I felt like a hell, getting banged up as I slid down the slope.

When it came time to traverse I was feeling better and we started back toward Illumination saddle. About half way up a steep ice sheet whose surface had the look and feel of ten billion ice cubes all dumped out and froze together, I fell.

I tried to self arrest but the art of self arresting is the art of getting it right the first time. If you fail to self arrest in a fall there is very little hope of arresting again. I picked up speed, caught a boot on one of the ten billion ice cubes and did a back flip, with my ice ax out of my hands and flying about me.

As the back flip happened my brain split into two people. One was screaming for his mother. I know it sounds melodramatic but it was true. I was screaming for my mom and as spun down the slope. This screamer had no idea who he was or where he was or why. He only needed his mother, nothing more. He did not even understand what was happening to him. He was suffering from pure, uncut, unfiltered terror. There was no peace, no comfort, no happy endings.

The other person was totally detached and listening to the screamer in puzzlement. "So I am going to die." He calmly thought while his other self screamed away. He also did not know who he was. This other person was not afraid, he was robotic and noted that all he could see was a dark blue blur followed by a white blur and that this vision repeated endlessly.

Then I stopped. I pendulumed back and forth then came to rest on my stomach face down hill looking down the throat of the Reid Glacier. When I opened my eyes the two people became one and that one was a mess. I had no idea who I was, where I was, what had happened to me. Total amnesia. I remember beginning to scream again that I did not who I was.

Then my parters called down to me. This was the equivalent of hitting the reset button. I suddenly was in possession of the facts. I had tripped, fallen, failed to arrest and cartwheeled about 80 feet. I was banged up. I remember laughing with pride that I did know my name and said it over and over again as I began to ascend to the saddle. In 30 minutes we were both sitting on our packs at the saddle, the sun blazing down on us. My partner had saved my life.

I was then, it seemed, more alive or aware of the act of being alive, than ever before or since. I danced down the mountain as happy as I have ever been. I noted the sky was blue, the sun white hot, the hills and mountains a grand spectacle and the whole world the epitome of magnificence and splendor. There was no vale of superficial problems blurring the world. All was crystal clear and nothing beat the feeling and knowledge that I was alive. I felt like I had my finger stuck in the light-socket of the Holy spirit. And there was no religious mumbo jumbo about it either. No quires of angels or God in a tunnel of light either. Only the feelings of absolute certainty of death and absolute certainty of life. And God said LIVE!

I would not wish the profound sense of horror I experienced on anyone. It is a feeling so awful that it colors my feelings toward any persons death. I know that I do not want to be alert enough to know about it going to happen. At the same time it sharpens the focus of life, if you can escape its grasp, so that even momentarily you get to see how spectacular life really is, any life, all life.

I will die again someday and probably not luck out as before. Will I meet that day with a sense of "oh yeah I remember you." Or scream for my mom. I will let you know.