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near death experiences (well, falling..) 25-Nov-2005 At 4:03:38 PM gusc

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I fell (a little way) onto a loaded snow slope in the mountains in NZ and then watched the whole thing fracture into an avalanche below me. No real time to think about anything as I fell down into it and was swept away, although I was vaguely aware of not wanting to be swept off a cliff at the bottom. Certainly nothing felt very slow-motion.

Everything finally stopped & I was buried and the snow set like stone. Thought "I'll just wiggle a finger and start to dig myself out now", but couldn't move a muscle and realised I couldn't breathe either. Then thought, "well, I'm stuffed because my climbing partner's buried now too." Tried breathing, couldn't, and waited to die. The next 3 minutes didn't seem particularly long - no life flashing before my eyes - but were probably eclipsed by panic.

Then this amazing, complete break in my life until I felt like I was drawn out of a very dark place by a tiny buzzing that ended up being my (unburied, as it turned out) climbing partner shouting at me down a snowey hole and some deep, ragged breaths and groans from me.

I think I'd probably been buried <<10 minutes but had blacked out and stopped breathing. The overnight bivvy, certain a big winter storm was coming, and 8 hours of downclimbing the next day, now scared of snow slopes, was another story...

So I experienced no lovely cliches! The weirdest thing was that total 'break' that separates the start and end of being buried. I guess that's just called being unconscious, but it certainly is weird because up until that point, I _knew_ that when I did lose consciousness I wasn't coming back, because I'd had time to contemplate & understand that my rescuer was buried too.

Going back into the mountains was a fair old mind f---. I was pretty scared on each subsequent trip but really wanted to be there at the same time. I don't mountaineer any more, but I still have a particular fear of being caught out somewhere high e.g. high on a crag with a long descent if weather is closing in or something. It's quite irrational but is slowly fading with time.