Ask Lemmy

Mine doesn't involve nature, so much as just unfortunate timing and bad luck. But it was outdoors and one of the only times I thought I was actually going to die, so maybe that counts?

I was probably 15 or 16 when this happened. My family went to visit some other family members in Denver. While we were there, we took a day to go up into the Rockies with a bunch of ATVs and go riding around some trails along the mountains.

We end up finding this trail that runs along a really steep cliff. It wasn't so steep that you'd have gone into freefall if you went over the edge, but it was steep enough that you would absolutely roll uncontrollably downhill, hitting every tree along the way for what looked like a hundred feet or so. But the trail was wide enough and had enough of a buffer along the edge that you had plenty of space to not have to worry about sliding off. You would have needed to try to fall off the edge, so I wasn't really worried about that.

I was at the back of the line in our group, and was letting them get a bit of a head start, as I wanted to speed up a bit along the straightaways. As I begin catching up with the rest of my family, they're all going along this really wide curve. And as my brother ahead of me goes over this slightly loose patch of ground, a mini landslide happens and just wipes out the trail right in front of me, going straight into that steep drop.

I slam on the brakes as soon as I realize what just happened, but the front wheels end up going just over the edge where the earth just fell apart. So now I'm stuck on this ATV, leaning downwards at a nearly 45-degree angle, trying desperately to reverse back up the hill, but I'm getting no traction on the fresh soil that got torn up, so the wheels are just spinning in place. Nobody ahead of me even realized that the earth just got swallowed up behind them, and since they thought I was giving them a long head start, they didn't think to look behind them for some time.

Meanwhile, I get off the ATV and try to push it back onto solid ground, but it weighs a ton and I'm just a wimpy teenager at the time, so I don't make much happen there. I'm trying really hard not to let the ATV go over because it's expensive and I was already in hot water for wanting to speed around on it in the first place and had to beg for my uncle's trust to do it, and because we were miles into this trail by this point, and I had no clue how to even make it back to where we were parked. And this was just before everybody had cell phones, so I was completely out of contact. So I was really doing my best to get this ATV back into gear so that I could at least make it back before it got dark out.

Trying to save the ATV was a bad idea, because in attempting to reverse it back onto solid ground, I loosened up so much dirt that it began sliding back down, knocking me over onto my ass, nearly rolling right over top of me. Luckily, I slid just a couple feet into a small tree, and I was able to climb back up. But the ATV was long gone.

Just a few scrapes and bruises, nothing sprained or broken, so I'm good to walk back. It took me a couple hours, and the sun was setting just as I made it back to our cars. Nobody was there yet, so I figured I'd just climb into the car and lay down until they got back. Turns out, they eventually did realize I wasn't behind them, sent my brother back to look for me, he saw the landslide and the ATV flipped at the bottom of the hill, turned back and told the rest of my family who freaked out and assumed I was dead or dying. They end up making it back to the cars after a while, but not after my uncle climbed down and then back up that hill to see if I was down there.

All was well, I didn't need any medical attention, and my uncle ended up going back out the next day to recover the ATV. Somehow, aside from having most of the body dented to all hell and snapped apart in several places, it was completely functional.