Motorcycle:

I was a recently-returned missionary and bought a sportbike that was more than I could handle. I was tooling around the country roads near Utah Lake/Beehive Clothing in American Fork (riding without any gear whatsoever) and decided I'd like to see if the motorcycle could hit 100 mph.

I ran out of straight road a lot quicker than I expected and realized (at about 85 mph) that I could either hit 100 or slow down and make the turn ahead, but probably not both. But I was so close to 100 that I kept accelerating for another second or so. When I finally started slowing down, I noticed, for the first time, that the curve ahead of me was pretty liberally covered with rocks and dirt.

I'll never forget the sickening feeling of the bike's rear tire sliding on the loose dirt or the thought—more emotion than words—that went through my mind... Something like "I'm going to miss my family. I sure love them. What a dumb way to die." After all the bad decisions I made, my one good decision was to straighten the bike and take my chances riding it out off road. I left the road at between 40 and 50 mph and got bounced around quite a bit, but managed to ride it out and keep the bike upright without damage to the bike or injury to myself.

Backpacking in the Uintas near Dead Horse Pass:

I was at the end of an exhausting backpacking trip in the Uintas. It was raining, my friend and I were cold and exhausted (having covered ~50 miles in the prior 48 hrs) and as we approached the summit of a pass in the Uintas (I think it was Dead Horse Pass), we lost the trail.

We were approximately 50 feet from the summit, and both started edging along the face of the mountain, in roughly the same direction as the path had been headed. Pretty soon we were splayed, almost completely vertical, with our hands and feet dug into loose shale and dirt, with nothing below us for more than 2,000 feet—and each spider-like slide to the right left us with less and less traction. It was raining, we were slipping, the wind was blowing hard and catching our packs like sails, and it was clear that our idea of scrabbling to the top was an impossibility—but we also had no idea where the trail was.

I was aware enough to realize that I was in an extremely dangerous position, but too exhausted to care or have any "So this is it" sort of thoughts. I'm sure we were both praying and as we looked back toward the way we had come, the sun momentarily broke through the rain clouds, shone through the pass about 40 feet above us, and lit up the trail (we had gone off the edge of a switchback, and the relatively flat trail was more reflective than the angled mountainside in the momentary flash of light).