Why luck is so important in the mountains!

I just watched two videos of some very lucky people in the mountains.  There have been many times in my own life when I got back to the car after a climb and thought, "Wow, I'm lucky to be alive."  Well, these climbers, especially the ice climber, are about as lucky as they come.

Another view of the same avalanche can be found on this website:

http://slc-samurai.blogspot.com/2012/06/denali-part-4-messner-avalanche.html

Pretty crazy. Here's another one.

Unbelievably close!  Getting out into the mountains is great, of course, but be careful!  Lots of ways one can die.  I'm sure, especially in this situation, there were a lot of reasons why this guy should never have been in this situation, but a little luck has allowed him to learn from his mistakes (hopefully) and climb another day.

To all you Ogdenites, be careful.  The snakes are out in force.  A good friend of mine took off the other day to solo a big climb and stepped on a rattlesnake less than two minutes into the approach.  He then ran into many more.  Phil and I ran into two rattlesnakes the other day coming off a big 12hr climb. 

Anyway, everybody have fun and be safe!