I was aware was of being in a bad situation that was getting worse, faster than I could comprehend, as I slid and fell down the wall. I broke my left arm, four ribs, punctured a lung and chipped a tooth during my acceleration downwards. I was one hundred and forty five feet above Ron when I slipped. I was twenty feet below him when I stopped.

There was a flash of white-hot pain as my back broke and I passed out. Ron franticly untied himself and hurriedly climbed down to where I lay. He told me later, I looked like a deer that had been hit by a car. There was blood pouring out of my nose and mouth and my eyes were open, rolled back and there was dust on them, but I wasn’t blinking. Ron knew not to try to move me. He told me later that I had landed at the foot-of-the-wall at the only flat spot for hundreds of feet in either direction. If I had landed a foot to either side, the fall would have killed me.

He hollered to Diane to go for help. He pulled the tarp, I had thrown down, over me, tried not to freak out and waited for rescue. Diane ran from the base of the climb to call the rangers, to report my accident, to get help. Ron told me later that I was barely breathing, the slight movement of my chest indicating that I hadn't been killed by the fall. His voice started to break, he stopped and wiped his eyes.

“You really scared me,” he said voice shaking.

Ron has never been climbing since.

A six bladed Sikorsky helicopter was called in from Alameda Naval Air Station to rescue me. Ron said that every time a rotor blade went overhead it made a whooshing, popping noise and sent rocks flying. The largest of these was more than a foot in diameter. There was no flat space large enough for the helicopter to set down on, so it hovered while the crewmen attended to me.

Ron told me the down draft was intense, almost blowing him over. They put a helmet on me, strapped me in a gurney and air lifted me down to the Yosemite Valley medical center. My blood pressure was non existent. They discovered a pneumothorax (punctured lung) from my broken ribs. They siphoned a liter of blood and fluid out of my lung cavity and then my blood pressure shot up to 90 over 60.

Once my conditions were stable, another helicopter, “The Med-Fly” carried me down to Doctor’s Hospital in Modesto. In the meantime Ron and Diane drove back to Merced to tell my Mom what had happened. At Merced entrance to Yosemite, the Arch Rock ranger station, they asked the rangers not to call my mother, that they needed to be the ones tell her what had happened. After getting assurances no one would call Mom, they left on the two hour drive to Merced.

Before the rangers at Arch Rock were able to call into Yosemite Valley, someone from the Park Service had already called my Mom and talked to her. When Ron and Diane got to Merced, my poor Mom was hysterical. She thought her son was dead or dying. She was staggering around crying and wailing. I was in a coma (which lasted 6 weeks) with a broken back, broken left arm, four broken ribs, a punctured lung and a traumatic brain injury (cerebral hematoma - it almost killed me). When I landed at the foot of the climb my brain kept going until it was stopped by the bottom of my cranial cavity.

The interior of the skull is lined with ridges to strengthen it against external impact. Though sharp, these ridges are essential to strengthen the skull against exterior impact. The brain has evolved deep fissures to allow for them. Though my brain stem was bruised from the impacting these ridges there was no horizontal motion which would have shredded my brain and caused intracranial bleeding.

A bruise to the brain stem is quite serious. Most people, until me, had never survived such an accident. If there had been bleeding, the Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) probably would have killed me. My family gathered at Twain Harte. Everyone assumed I was going to die. The attending physician at Doctor’s Hospital was not very optimistic about my future.

He told my Mom that he had seen a lot of people that were hurt less badly than me. None of them survived. Therefore, his experience led him to believe I would not survive either. In an attempt at empathy, he advised my Mom to contact funeral homes to arranged for my burial. My aunt later told me my Mom was so upset, she didn't sleep for three days. In fact, Genieve told, Mom had called her at 3 AM. Mom was so hysterical, it was about 5 minutes before Genieve knew why mom had called.

As with most life-changing experiences, this was a shock to my body. I was in a coma for six weeks and woke to a new reality.