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Sierra Ledge Rat wrote:...and electrocuted for 20 minutes

That's definitely the most impressive one. It reminds of something I heard recently on the radio. The question "Have you ever been decapitated?" was included in a public poll of unusual questions to be used on a certain game show. Four percent of the respondents said "yes".

JD wrote:

Sierra Ledge Rat wrote:...and electrocuted for 20 minutes

That's definitely the most impressive one. It reminds of something I heard recently on the radio. The question "Have you ever been decapitated?" was included in a public poll of unusual questions to be used on a certain game show. Four percent of the respondents said "yes".

LOL

Shall I keep going?

I wish you would! I could relate to many of those, and a few extra I have of my own.
Well, once I was soloing a 5.6, 100 feet up, I heard the familiar shout "Rope." Looked up and waited for seemed like 5 minutes. I figured the people up there gave up on the idea of throwing the rope. Continued climbing hesitantly. then I heard a thump just above my head. It was a back pack with the rope unflaking out of it. It bounced and missed me. I wanted to punch the guys up there but there were four of them, all younger and bigger than me.

JD wrote:That's definitely the most impressive one.

When it started, we were just leaving the summit of Rainier. The skies were clear all round the mountain, but there was a cloud cap over the summit. My first thought that I was getting stung across my entire back by a swarm of bees, but then I quickly realized: "There are no bees on the summit of Rainier." The metal stays in my backpack were zapping me.

Then my ice axe and glasses started humming loudly and I knew we were in deep doo-doo. Then lightning hit, with a simultaneous thunder clap. It was so powerful that it shook my bones. We dumped all of our metal, ran about 100 feet away and lay in the snow a rope length apart. The next 20 minutes were pretty terrifying. The electricity would build and build and build - felt like you getting stung all over by bees. Then - BANG! A lightning bolt would fly right over your head, and the stinging would stop briefly. Seems like there was a lightning strike about every 20 seconds for 20 minutes.

On those moments of reprieve I lifted my head from the snow and looked over at my brother with a thumbs up - "I'm still alive, how about you?"

On yeah, forgot to mention, a blizzard started with the lightning, it snowed about 6 inches in those 20 minutes.

Wow. Running into that snake seems equivalent to jumping over a puddle by comparison to some of the things I just read.

Can't beat the Rainier and lightening strikes story for physical danger - mine is more about dangerous chemical warfare waged against me at 14,000ft. Stuck in a tiny Tadpole tent overnight with my husband after he consumed a 4-man Kung Pao Chicken freeze-dried dinner - I still get queasy thinking about it ...

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