Well, I almost got attacked by a coiled rattlesnake once. I don't think I can top SLR's list there, but hey, give me a few years more, and who knows?

My most dangerous moment in my climbing career
happened early on in 1960 on Little Si a small
foothill really near Snoqualmie Pass in the Cascades east of Seattle. I was an instructor for a Tacoma Mountaineers Basic Climbing Class practice climb. Little Si has a two pitch rock faceon one side of its otherwise forested slopes. I
was belaying two students about 110' up a chimney standing on a wide ledge using a standing hip belay. I was not tied in to any
anchor as I was certain the two students were
too small in size to pull my 6'3" 185 pound frame
off the wide ledge. As I watched my first student
get ready to head up the chimney a party of three climbers above me about 70' kicked off a rock about a foot wide. They never yelled "Rock"
and the projectile hit the side of my helmet and
knocked me face down on the ledge splitting my
helmet down the left side. I won't repeat the
words I expressed in a loud voice when I regained my feet.
Lucky for all concerned I was wearing a hard
hat (uncommon in that era) and my student wasn't actually climbing in the chimney when the rock sailed down.
That was the last time I ever belayed standing without tying off to an anchor or being seated on a secure ledge.
I have had many other experiences like being
on top Sourdough Ridge in the North Cascades in a severe lightning storm and having to drop my ice axe, rack and pack and run off the ridge in
to the steep forest with crackling, light flashes,and hair standing on end.
If your luck holds, and you learn from your mistakes you make it in to your seventies!

Sierra Ledge Rat wrote:- Free soloed a pitch I knew I couldn't down climb, and then found that I couldn't go up either

I'd kind of like to hear more about this one.

jdzaharia wrote:

Sierra Ledge Rat wrote:- Free soloed a pitch I knew I couldn't down climb, and then found that I couldn't go up either

I'd kind of like to hear more about this one.

I was free-soloing a 14er peak in Colorado, got to a steep 5.7 face that looked tricky. I tried some of the moves and realized that it would be impossible for me to down climb. But I was so close to the summit (100 feet?) and just above the angled kicked back, and the rest looked easy (class 4). So I climbed the tricky face - about 20 feet of face climbing - only to get stopped higher up by an icy corner and icy slabs that I didn't see from down below. Going up was impossible in rock shoes.

There was no place to stand and rest comfortably, so I started descending. I tried down-climbing the tricky 5.7 down-climbing but it was impossible to reverse the moves. There was no where to rest, and soon I realized that I was dead either way.

I was going to get tired and fall to my death if I just stood there for very much longer.
I was going to fall to my death if I tried to down-climb the 5.7 face.

I figured that I'd die trying, so I descended before I got too tired. I made it to the bottom and quit free-soloing at age 34. I fell at the bottom and broke my ankle, and crawled out to the trailhead on my knees, and that was the icing on the cake on that day.

I was in a hanging belay on Looking Glass in NC, and a massive t-storm formed right on top of us. Took maybe 5 minutes to go from blue skies to midnight black, 60mph winds, hail, and wicked lightning. I'm in a water runoff runnel with a full trad rack strapped on me, two 60m raps off the ground. I was 16....welcome to weather on the mountain son!

Puma concolor wrote:Just one?

Ataxia during descent between the top of Pig Hill and Denali Pass.

Does Pig Hill have a lot of police officers ascending it, or are they all at the bottom eating donuts

Although Ive had some bad encounters with weather in the mountains, and a few close calls in terms of falling rocks and falling off ledges, Ive got to say that my most dangerous situations involved people.

This was one of the sketchier ones, which occurred last year in the Diablo Range during a 57-mile backpack, all of which was private land


during a moonlight peakbagging trip, also in the Diablo Range

... So Steve ... the most dangerous thing you ever did was dueling banjos ?

Actually, I remember it as a banjo and a guitar dueling.

Caught in a snow thunderstorm at 14,000. I may have been splashed by lightning

erics1234 wrote:Ive got to say that my most dangerous situations involved people.

Anyone ever tell you that you've got a really pretty mouth?

Sierra Ledge Rat wrote:

erics1234 wrote:Ive got to say that my most dangerous situations involved people.

Anyone ever tell you that you've got a really pretty mouth?

Just imagine this guy's breath ! Now, that's what I call "most dangerous!"

Everyone that did a little bit of hiking encountered the dangers that you pointed out. They are all scary, with the lightning being number 1. But what scared me most ever was at the end of October 2014 during a Rim to Rim to Rim at the Grand Canyon. It was pitch dark, about 8-9PM. I was probably 35 miles into my hike. I raised my head and I saw on my left side two green round lights about 20 feet away from me. I stopped instantly and took a better look: another two green round lights appeared. Than another two, only a few feet away from the other once. The all looked like floating lights, nothing around them or behind them. My head flashlight was good, but obviously not that good to light up a large area. I was so scared, my heart was racing. When I looked to the right of me I saw even more green round lights. I was surrounded by these lights that would not move and there was nothing else that I could see in that pitch dark night. Being petrified, standing there not understanding what was going on, two green lights moves up and down. It was than that I realized they were all deer. Lot's of deer eating in those bushes. They were all staring at me. I cursed and I continued hiking. That was the scariest moment of my hiking life.