I want to go a few months without having a serious brush with death.

The most recent one happened this Saturday. I rolled my Subaru twice, totaled it, and got a glass shower, but walked away more of less unscathed.

Mikey, Don and I went up to the Adirondacks, planning on a four day weekend ice climbing. Friday we got a relaxed seven or eight pitches in, and had a great time, good ice, not too cold and sunny. It looked like it was going to be a promising weekend.

Saturday I was driving to Poko-o-Moonshine around 9am. The roads were a touch slushy but seemed OK. I went around a left turn in the road and started to fishtail.

No worries.. .I'm pretty good about recovering. Ease off the gas, don't brake, don't over steer, just ride it out. Don't overreact

Something was different this time.

The oscillations of the car were getting worse, not better… and the bend in the road meant that each sway took me closer to perpendicular than it otherwise would have. I eyed the trees on the side of the road, still concerned about smashing my car up.

I held if together for a few hundred feet, then the right rear wheel slide off the road, as I was beside a short drop off. Nearly as soon as it did, it caught and the car rolled.
It slid on the roof.

"This is how people die in cars". I remember very clinically noting that my shoulder was pressed into the door, but my head and neck seemed to be ok, surprisingly.
I heard glass breaking and metal bending and felt a shower of snow mixed with the shards of the passenger window hitting me. The same oddly detached feeling the climbers will associate with a big lead fall. Total loss of control, not exactly fear, more a numb dread in the pit of your stomach. Knowing that what happens to you is out of your hands now, and all you can do is hope it goes well.

The car slid for what felt like forever but was probably only fractions of a second on the roof, then flipped back upright, the back over again.. faster this time. Like the all free rolls people see in movies. Nothing to do but hold on numbly.

It stopped on the wheels with an impressive thud. A spray of snow settled and I saw smoke, or steam blowing off the engine. I took a slow deep breath and waited for the pain to start. You don't always feel the big stuff at first, so I braced myself to look down and see. something, a bone end, a piece of the car through my leg, or something…. bad.

Nothing. No pain, just the flood of adrenalin I know all to well from climbing. I was covered in glass though. Mixed with the snow it felt surprisingly soft. I pulled down the mirror, expecting my face to be a mask of blood and cuts. Nothing.

Running my hands over my head, expecting to feel the warm stickiness of a bleeding scalp.
….Nothing.

I looked in the back. Don had not been wearing a seatbelt and had been tossed into the back seat. I always wear mine and don't even think to check my passengers. Had I lost control completely just a little earlier I would've hit the trees, and he probably would have been tossed out of the car.

"Everyone ok"
"yes"

The car had stalled. I turned the key and was surprised that it started. Almost reflexively I put the gas down, and was surprised that the wheels spun.

Enough of that, stop the car and get out. The car had stopped around ten feet from the river. About sixty feet wide and.. deep enough.

It was bad. But at least we were in one piece.

The police were nice enough to ticket me for "driving too fast for special hazards (ice)" despite the fact that an EMT responding to the accident put her car in a ditch and had to by towed out as she tried to leave.

Now we were in upstate New York, (Upper Jay), by Lake Placid. The rental car companies close on the weekends here. I called the boss and told him I might not make work Monday.

Sunday we hitchhiked the 120 miles to Albany, rented a car from the airport and drove home.
It's been a long weekend.

I'm shocked at how lucky we all were. I have a minor glass cut on my wrist, wide but not deep enough for stitches, and I keep finding little scabs on my scalp, but I'm fine. If it makes sense, I'm almost disturbed by how little I was disturbed. I'm shaken to be sure, but I've felt this before. I've wondered if I would make it home on several mountains, and each time the aftermath is easier. The cycle between elation and fighting sobs less pronounced and shorter. What is this going though? I mean I'm glad I can handle fear as well as I (apparently) can, but this isn't intended to be bragging. Should feeling like you might die traumatically really be something you're "used to"?

In the two days since the accident, two different people have also offered to GIVE me old cars. At the risk of being overly sentimental, I'm pretty touched. To quote, someone. It's never the things you plan for that rock you. Reality has a way of slapping you in the face on a normal Tuesday afternoon. Take a deep breath

This is a trip report Don sent via email in a thread discussing this climb. I am reposting it here with his permission.

By Don Wargowsky

I think I came away from this trip with a little different view of the climb than Chris did. Here are my thoughts:

before the trip Chris and I met with Bill Brose to pick his brain about the climb. when we asked bill what to expect and if he though we could do it he said "if you can climb 1000' of 60 degree ice and move for 20 hours straight then you can do it." he said to expect around 8 hours for the approach and around 8 hours on the face. I have a lot of respect for Bill and he is great on ice. so I was expecting to take 20 hours. I’d read trip reports with faster times, but they were usually locals or guides/rangers.

Living at sea level and only being able to climb 1-2 mountains a year I don't expect to set and speed records in the Canadian Rockies. for a local climber or ranger to climb the north face car to car in 10-14 hours is pretty common. but they live at an elevation 5000' above Pittsburgh and climb mountains the way we climb at Seneca.

Our first attempt was probably not the best idea. conditions were not good. I think we both knew when we left the car that we weren't going to make it up that night. It was good for acclimatization though. we did have a chance to do some real glacier travel which was a good experience. It was a fun night, but maybe not the best idea to climb that far when we wanted to make another try for the summit just 18 hours later.

summit day - things went well on the approach and glacier travel was pretty fast. Chris did a great job of breaking trail to the face. he was moving at a excellent pace even with steep slopes and post holing up to his knees in places. the glacier was amazing. the idea was to have Chris break trail to the face, then I would lead the face with us simulclimbing.

By Christian Mason

This is difficult to write, and harder to share. Hopefully admitting to some very stupid mistakes will help someone else. If nothing else, writing this has been a bit cathartic for me. Every big climb I’ve been on has changed me. Sometimes it brought clarity, and contentment after the turmoil of emotions subsided.

This trip left me more confused than before I left. Don and I planned on climbing the North Face of Athabasca, something I’ve been drooling over ever since I started climbing. We were successful, if you can call taking twice the expected time and returning with black finger tips a success. I can’t.

We started Saturday morning for our first attempt. We planned on leaving the car at midnight, but there was a thick cloud cover over the mountain, so we stalled for a few minutes and watched the weather. We decided to start the approach, and see how things looked. We scrambled over the rocky moraine and up to the glacier before deciding to bail for the day. The weather had cleared somewhat, but we still couldn’t see the top 1800 or so feet of the mountain and the going had been far to slow in light of the poor visibility. We headed back to the car, for around a seven hour round trip. It served as good acclimatization and route finding though.

by Christian Mason

This was some of the scariest climbing I've ever done. The imperative was to move fast, but absolutely not to make any mistakes.

In May 2005, Sid Wiesner, Don W. Ryan H and I went to Mt. Rainier intending to climb the Kautz glacier route. This was the first "real mountain" for all of us. We intended it to be a major learning experience, we nearly got more than we intended. Bad snow conditions forced us to abandon our route of choice and we instead went up Gibraltar Ledges. This trip saw the formation of Team Bivy with our first unplanned bivy. I was later told that Bivy is a french word for "mistake". This trip report began as an email I typed to myself in a public library.

I'm back from Rainier, and in one piece, below is a trip report that I typed in a public library outside Portland about a day after we got down.

Rainier was insane... I'm typing this from the Public Library in Portland, OR. I'm still an emotional jumble of highs and lows from my experience on the mountain, and I'm trying to hold onto some of that. We were the first party to summit in two weeks, but also had an unplanned night out and spent close to 26 hours on the move, the last 15 or so with no food or water. I'd been getting nervous for awhile leading up to this. This was the first mountain for all of us, not counting the little pimples we've climbed on the east coast. Sid has taken the mountaineering school twice, making him the most experienced member of our party in this theater. I'm the strongest rock climber, but was fresh out of the school and overly ambitious. Don and Ryan are both strong reliable guys, but have a cavalier attitude that scares the hell out of me. I didn't know how any of us would handle it if things took a turn for the worse.