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near death experiences (well, falling..) 25-Nov-2005 At 5:23:34 PM gusc

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On 25/11/2005 nmonteith wrote:
>Freaky nightmare story Gusc. So it really does set like stone hey... how
>did your partner locate you?

Like stone all right. It was amazing - one moment like being dumped in the surf and the next moment it sorta slowed down and condensed all around me. It was such an awful feeling, because up until then I'd thought "great, survived the fall, so now I'll just dig myself out."

My partner managed to keep his feet and apparently turned around to remark "hey, that was close!" and I wasn't there! I think he just went into automatic and did a surface search for pieces of gear that had ripped off my pack, then luckily confirmed my location with his transceiver on the 2nd or 3rd piece. It was a bloody amazing effort because I don't think he'd had heaps and heaps of practice with a transceiver.

It certainly reinforced to me the importance of just knowing what to do and being able to do it bloody quickly and efficiently.

Stupid thing was we'd started crossing the slope and backed off because it was dodgy. I then had the good fortune to slip down a slab as we traversed above the slope! 100+kg of me & pack falling onto the bloody thing was sorta like the mother of all snow-pit tests...