I can think of three times I came really close to death. The first time I was about 15 years old when a friend and I cut school, hitch-hiked south, where we unintentionally scaled a 250 foot cliff on Devil's Slide about 25 miles south of San Francisco. We had hiked down a trail to the rocky beach, there was no sand, just huge rocks and boulders. We then hiked back a quarter mile north. Not wanting to hike back to the trail we looked up at the cliff and thought we would be able to climb it back up to Highway 1 without a problem. What we didn't realize was that what we thought was the top of the cliff was actually only about a third of the way to the top. Once we reached what we thought was the top we faced almost 200 feet of a steep incline to the road. The incline was covered in loose shale. Anyone who has climbed a cliff knows it's much easier going up than going down. Going up you can see the hand and foot holds, going down you're blind. We had no choice but to continue climbing. The shale was too slippery to scale so we had to climb, side by side, in two narrow crevices caused by water previously running down the cliff. We were about two feet apart scared to death. About 50 feet from the top my friend began to slowly slip back down. Luckily he didn't panic and grab me or start clawing frantically at the dirt. He dug in with his fingers and toes and just froze, He slipped a few feet and stopped. Sliding off the cliff meant certain death. It wasn't just a matter of being seriously injured. It was death. We clung to the cliff and both started crying. If we were smart we would have stayed put hoping for someone to see us, but we were not smart. We were young. We finally managed to make to the top. But I never climbed a cliff that steep ever again. The first section was straight up and down. The other two near death experiences involved driving. Me at the wheel both times.