Here's my story. It's long... very long... but I think it's good (yeah, I've admittedly got a bias
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Eleven years ago, at the age of 24, I was taking wilderness survival courses first, survival then land navigation/orienteering at the University of New Mexico, where I was a student. The classes were taught by three retired Air Force Pararescuemen (PJs) and one younger man who started his military career as an Army Ranger, then became Army Special Forces (Green Beret) then cross-trained as a PJ.
In the survival portion of the class, we were REQUIRED to carry on our bodies, not just our packs, at least six items: a compass, a ferro rod (we called 'em metal matches), a portable knife sharpener, a fixed-blade knife, a signal mirror, and a signal whistle. As part of our gear, the instructors issued us each a Cold Steel Bushman and a Leatherman, and we were encouraged to bring and test any gear we wished. One man brought his SOG Seal Pup. We were trained in orienteering and survival skills, including shelter-building, trap-and-snare making, map-and-compass reading and, of course, fire starting.
On May 5 2002, I was taking the field final for Land Navigation. Although the standard practice in the class was for students to navigate by ourselves, because of a previous injury Id suffered when I was 20 years old, the former Green Beret was with me while I did my navigation leg. His presence proved to be a God-send, saving not only my leg but, quite possible, my life.
At around 2:30 p.m. that sunny May day, after completing around two-thirds of my route, the instructor and me came to a long rock ridge. This ridge ranged from eight to 15 feet tall, so we walked around, looking for a safe place to descend. After a bit of searching, I found an area with a boulder to step down to. I was hopping from an eight-foot-tall wall of rock down to a four-foot-tall boulder and, from there, to the ground. The step boulder was in a 90-degree corner of rock where the cliff bent before continuing along the mountains ride.
I waved the instructor over, and we decided it looked like a safe place to descend. I went first, stepping onto the short ledge. The moment I began lowering myself, I had a sensation that the whole world was shifting beneath my feet. I looked down and, to my dismay, saw that a piece of the cliff had broken under me and was falling, with me standing on top and falling with it.
Suddenly, I pitched forward and fell off the rock, landing on my feet. I turned around, but was pinned in the corner of wall-like rocks, standing on the boulder I'd been stepping to. I looked up and, for a split second, time stood still.
It's incredible how quickly the mind can race when in the midst of a catastrophe. The boulder from which I'd fallen was hovering directly above me, and I was caught in a corner of rock, incapable of escaping. For a brief moment, I went completely numb. No sad music, no feeling of horror, accompanied my realization. Instead, I felt utterly detached and numb from the realization that, if the boulder hit me anywhere from the waist up, it would crush me, and I would bleed to death.
The thought that swept through my head read like a newspaper articles title "Twenty-four years old, dead in the mountains from a hiking accident. A short life." I then had a second thought: "God, I may be coming to you soon, and if I do, that's OK. But it doesn't feel like it's my time yet. I'm sure there's something else I'm still supposed to do on this earth."
After those thoughts whipped through my brain, it felt like time resumed, and the boulder was rushing at me. It fell onto the rock on which I stood, with me in its direct path, trapped in a corner of the cliff. I raised my arms and put them in front of my chest, reasoning that if the boulder hit my upper torso, perhaps it would crush my arms but I'd survive.
The rock rushed at me, throwing me against the cliff wall behind me. It was triangle-shaped, with the bottom being around six inches wide. Later estimates of the boulder placed it around 1,000 pounds. As the chunk moved, I pivoted my body out of its path. I had extracted most of my body and, for an instant, had a wild hope that Id survive.
As I finagled my body around the boulder, its upper corner caught my right knee, slamming my leg against the cliff and instantly breaking the top of my tibia behind my knee cap. This positioned my lower right leg and foot directly under the boulder. The small, triangular point rolled onto my foot, wedging my right foot and leg into a crevice between the cliff and the rock onto which Id fallen.
Under the weight of the boulder, my foot plummeted through the crack. But the crack narrowed, too small for my foot to wedge any deeper. I was wearing a pair of Columbia hiking boots and the boot sole around the heel was incredibly thick and stiff. This material kept my foot from wedging deeper into the crack. It also kept the boulder from shearing off my ankle bones. But thick boot soles couldnt hold back the rocks massive weight from pushing down, down on my little shin bone.
I heard my foot bones crunch, then I listened to my tibia and fibula snap repeatedly. These sounds were followed by more crunching, as if my bones were potato chips and the boulder were powerful jaws, chewing up my fragile bones. I was in such a state of shock, I kid you not, my first thought was, Ill bet my legs broken. Later X-rays would reveal that my shin and fibula had been reduced to splinters, with an inch gap in my shin.
After the boulder had pushed my leg into the crevice as far as the boulder could fall, being flat in shape, the rock flopped onto its side, laying on the boulder to which Id stepped, and trapping my leg in the crevice. The instructor, whod been waiting for me to descend, watched in helpless horror as the events transpired. I yelled for him, panicked. He found a different place to get off the cliff, then rushed over to me. And heres where the miracle continues
First, I didnt die, but my leg was crushed and pinned. However, the boulder on which I stood was pitch-shaped, like a roof, and the crushing boulder sat perfectly poised on the apex of the underfoot rock. My leg was trapped, but the rock was balanced like a teeter-totter thats horizontally positioned. Additionally, the instructor had been training as a power lifter for the previous year. He stood under the near side of the crushing rock, pushed upwards and, because of the boulders shape and position, the rock slid off my leg! I pulled my foot from the crevice, sat down, and immediately passed out.
When I came to, the instructor helped me hobble to the nearby hillside and leaned me against a large pine tree with my legs facing uphill. Miracle number three then happened the head instructor just so happened to be down the very hill I was on! The course instructors all carried walkie-talkies, and the instructor who was with me raced down the hill to get his supervisor. All four instructors had been PJs, whose primary role is combat search-and-rescue. As such, they are extensively trained in emergency field medicine and extraction techniques. The head instructor was a career PJ who had decades of experience and is known in both military and civilian circles for saving many, many lives.
As I waited for the instructors, I had to consciously turn my gaze away from my shattered limb. My right foot and lower leg flopped 90*to the side of my upper leg. The only thing holding my foot to my body was the skin and muscle surrounding the appendage. Not only was the sight sickening, but pain had begun to grip my being. I looked away to suppress rising panic.
The instructors returned after a brief wait of perhaps 10 minutes. Miracle number three began when the head instructor proceeded to pull traction on my leg. Every millimeter of movement brought either excruciating pain or floods of relief, depending on whether the bone shards were moving toward or away from their proper alignment. The instructor could only go by sight and my feedback. I dont know for certain how long the traction-pulling lasted, but I do know this:
When I finally arrived at the university hospital in Albuquerque, the only Level One trauma center in this state, the surgeon had to wait three days to do the first reconstruction. My leg was swollen so severely, the doctor had to watch and see if I developed compartmental syndrome, which would have required amputation of my lower right leg and foot. Incredibly, the swelling decreased. The surgeon later told me that the instructors had pulled traction so expertly, theyd lined up all the bone fragments in their proper places, minimizing further damage to soft tissues and saving my leg from being amputated.
So there I was: 24 years old, with a crushed leg, a prognosis of never being able to walk correctly, and an existence filled with pain. I was under doctors orders to stay in bed for 20-plus hours per day for the next eight months. Because my family was in the process of selling their house, I stayed for a little while with the mother-in-law of the instructor whod been hiking with me. Despite a busy work schedule and family life, he and his wife visited daily. Wed talk about wilderness survival skills, exercise routines, his military experiences, and, at length, knives!
Yes, a large portion of the survival class was dedicated to learning wilderness skills and about the best possible tools. Two of the four instructors carried Cold Steel Trailmasters; this happened back when they were made in Carbon V. Because of their instruction and credibility, my first survival knife was a Cold Steel SRK. It was on my belt when my leg was crushed, and the sheath still has gouges from being pushed against the boulder.
) but we made it.
