How I survived but sprained a finger [UPDATED]

Due to massive unseasonable rainfall and destructive winds recently, USFS sawyer crews have had to clear some 200+ trees off our local trail system in the past couple weeks.  Their efforts are greatly appreciated.

This recent spate of chaotic blow-down in the woods has caused me to recollect an event from my past.

On 13 June 2009 I was nearly struck by a falling tree.  

This is that story, written in 2009, now reposted.

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I forgot it was race day today.

 

And it quickly became evident as I headed out this morning that I'd overlooked this fact... the number plates on everyone's-bike-but-yours kinda gives that sort of thing away pretty quickly. 

But, other than a few skinny riders out early doing warm-up intervals on this somewhat breezy early summer morning, the only other folks I ran into on my way to ride the suffer-trail up Lower Brookbank were my friends Ken and Kurt preparing to do a little race-day corner-marshaling with a posse of their kids.

Toward the top of Lower Brookbank the already-steep trail tips upward and becomes even steeper just below the Upper Brookbank intersection. It's tough to clean this spot even on ideal conditions on your very best day. Today I rode toward this trap ready to dab (happens a lot). I always like to ride into it as far as I can, no matter what, hoping to perhaps get lucky, and today I thought I saw a decent line through the loose stuff, rocks and limb-litter, that's always accumulating on it.

I've been on Lower Brookbank several times this week, going both up and down it. So I immediately noticed, as I headed toward my line, that there were a few new sticks and limbs strewn about on the ground in this area that weren't there yesterday. A few of the limbs were sizable, five or six footers, that had obviously sluffed off one the the many large old snags that occupy this pocket of the hillside. I didn't think too much about the limbs though, they were off my line, not in the way, even if they were remarkable in size. 

But just as I rode past the base of one of these snags I began to hear huge cracking sounds just inches from my right shoulder as one of the dead trees next to the trail began to visibly and audibly give way right next to me!

Instinctively, I jumped off my bike and began to run up the trail as the sound of the tree crashing through the canopy overhead grew louder behind me. In my head I'm thinking, "It's going to kill me. If it falls on me I am dead." No time to look back, the crashing and cracking getting louder and more chaotic, I had no idea which direction the snag was going to fall.  Judging by the sound, it was coming down fast and very, very close to me. 

So, I just ran. As fast as I could. On a vector headed away from the sound. 

As the tree fell it began to sheer off it's own limbs and the limbs of other nearby trees. I could hear amazing, huge cracking and crashing sounds growing louder and louder right behind me. 

I kept running.  In a panic.  The trail steepened, I stumbled, and began to scramble on all fours, straight up the trail over the loose rock in the tread.

Then suddenly a voice in my head (not mine, I kid you not) said, "Uphill!  Run. Up. Hill!" 

I immediately cut up the much steeper bank of the hillside, scrambling with hands and feet over undisturbed duff and debris. Seconds later, with a massive gigantic crashing thud, the snag hit the ground. 

The commotion was instantly over.  I stopped scrambling.

I was about 20 feet away from the tree.  My bike, still laying on its side where I'd ditched it when I started running, was only inches from where it had fallen. 

The snag had fallen nearly perpendicular to the trail, pitched downhill from it's rotten rootball, but a lot less down-the-hill than I'd been hoping. It was an old cinnamon-colored ponderosa, with perhaps a three- or four-foot diameter, easily 75-100 feet tall.

I sprained my finger pretty good while I was scrambling. Not every day you get to say that. Nor is it every day that you get to be a real live Mythbuster either.

But I am today. 

Because I can tell you, for certain: When a tree falls in the forest, it makes a very big sound! 

UPDATE: 15 June 2009

Below is a little video I shot today of the tree that nearly got me on Saturday. 

Riding up Brookbank again this morning, I was a little concerned that I would find the tree to actually be smaller than I remembered it in-the-moment.

It is not. 

It is huge. 

I parked my bike more-or-less where I ditched it when I started running and shot the video from there...