The near death, mountain slide story

A year ago this weekend, the 31th of January or something, I thought it would be nice to drive up to Liverpool in a lovely shiny hire-car to visit my friends Jack and Andy and partake in a bit of Welsh mountain climbing followed by some evening poker, this is the story from last January, 2009:

On Saturday we drove over to Wales (in my hire car). There were 5 of us. We planned to hike up Glyder Fach which is near Snowdon. It’s a scrambling mountain where a lot of the time you’re climbing up big boulders and rocks rather than walking on a path so it was hard work but more fun. Going up was fine and easy and as we got higher there was more and more snow lying around. We reached the peak and set off along the ridge to where the path goes down and around and back to the road (not the way we’d come up).
The path down turned out to be rather treacherous for people without any equipment, i.e. us; more specifically, me. The mountain was really steep and covered in scree, which fell the instant you touched it. Nothing was very solid, and the only way to go down was to keep low and try and not dislodge too much scree. The main path was covered in snow and you could see where people with crampons had climbed up it.

I had a ‘good’ idea of using the footholes that were left in the snow as places to grip. So I slid on my bum with my feet in these footholes. It was like decending a ladder forwards and a lot quicker than the scree method. I reached a point where the footprints ran out and started making my own holes in the snow by digging my heels in which worked fine.

As I got lower the snow became more icy and less easy to make holes in. I realized that I’d need to move across to the scree area now as my snow route had run out. However, the scree area was about 5 metres to my left with nothing in between.

In the process of testing out whether I could make any footholds to my left I lost all grip with my feet and was holding on to a ‘foothole’ above me with one hand. I considered the fact that if I lost my one handed grip then everything would be aweful, and I found out that I was right.
I lost everything and started hurtling down the slope. It was really fast, faster than I could react, and completely uncontrolled and I really thought I’d be seriously injured, particularly if I hit the rocks which were scattered everywhere.

There was nothing much I could do to slow down because I was sliding on icey snow. After I’d picked up a ridiculous amount of speed I hit a flattish rock which made me airborne and I landed in a less snowy, more gravelly/rocky area. I didn’t feel like I was slowing down much even though I was off the snow and I knew that if I carried on sliding I could get seriously hurt. So I think I just dug in with my hands and eventually somehow stopped.

I checked myself and seemed to be alright apart from my fingers which had made holes in my gloves and were dripping blood (from where I’d clawed to a stop). I shouted that I was fine to everyone above me. And a couple of walkers below me yelled to see if I was ok.

From where I’d settled it was pretty straightforward to get to the bottom, there were lots of big rocks to move between. I got down and met a walker who said I should buy a lottery ticket & he knew people who’d died falling that distance, which was nice.

Anyway, another of our guys Jon met me at the bottom and we walked to the car which was still 1.5 hrs away. I’d sprained my left ankle and massively bruised my right hip so walking was a bit painful but I knew I needed to get to the car for warmth.
Anyway, me and Jon got back to the car and the others met us there about 30mins later and I was able to drive us back with my fingers covered in Savlon.

My complete injury list is: scraped left rib cage, bruised left hip, bruised coccyx, cut right shin, sprained left ankle, bruised left instep, bruised left & right hands, and the skin missing from the tops of my index and middle fingers behind the nails.

After the shock and adrenaline of it all, I’m feeling very lucky that I didn’t hit my head or any big rocks, and didn’t break anything and was able to walk and drive home. Plus, I was wearing crap woolen gloves which allowed my fingers to break through. If I’d had proper gloves on, I’d have had less grip!

Anyhow, I feel like Bruce Willis must feel in Die Hard films now, all battered and bruised. Thank god I’m not dead. 2 people died on Snowdon yesterday. Lesson learned; don’t climb mountains without proper equipment especially in winter.

John Xx