The Snowboarder's Journal • frequency 17.4 • THE OTHER SIDE

“The secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and THE greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously!” —Friedrich Nietzsche

I was 25 feet from the edge of the cornice when the ground beneath me gave way and I found myself dangling in darkness. My board had anchored in the snow above, bridging the hole. I clung to it because my life depended on it. Down equaled a 200-foot fall to my death, tomahawking down a jagged cliff. With great effort, I got my arms up and around my board, then my chest. I slithered out of the hole like a harp seal popping out of a frozen ocean. Shaking with adrenaline, I stared at the sky with no concept of time. It happened in March 2019, and it was as close to death as I’ve ever been.

The term “near-death experience” was coined by Dr. Raymond Moody in his 1975 book Life After Life. Since then it has come to describe a subjective experience in which a person is either clinically dead, near death or in a situation where death is imminent. The International Association of Near-Death Studies has a standardized test with a scale of 1-15. They consider anything above a seven an NDE. I took the test and scored an eight. I haven’t experienced any of the common post-NDE symptoms but, “Did time seem to slow down?” Check. “Were your thoughts sped up?” Bingo. “Did you suddenly seem to understand everything?” You betcha. “Did you have a feeling of peace and pleasantness?” Oddly enough, yes. “Did you feel a sense of harmony or unity with the universe?” I did. “Were your senses more vivid than usual?” It seemed like I could feel every cell in my body.

While I walked away unscathed, the experience made me wonder what effect an NDE can have on our desire to push our limits as snowboarders. So I spoke to Dr. Tim Woodman at the University of Bangor’s School of Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences. Dr. Woodman is world-renowned for his work with high-risk athletes and the effects of personality, stress and anxiety on performance. His theory holds that risk is essential for human development, especially in elite sport.

Dr. Woodman couldn’t speak directly to the effects of an NDE on athleticism, but he did give me a chapter from a forthcoming book by himself, Professor Lew Hardy and Dr. Matthew Barlow, which analyzes the psychological drive to participate in high-risk sports. The literature discusses an array of possible psychological conditions and theories that motivate people to become risk takers. In general, they suggest that most athletes in high-risk sports may be seeking such environments as a means of focusing and clarifying emotions that may otherwise be difficult to recognize. However, it was the Woodman et al. Agentic Emotion Regulation Theory that really caught my attention. It suggests that participants in high-risk sports are driven in three different scenarios:

Woodman, Hardy and Barlow also make a direct comparison between high-risk sports and competitive sports. High-risk athletes generally put their bodies at risk, whereas competitive athletes tend to put their egos at risk. This raises the obvious question: What about people who do both? Even better, what about someone who does both and has experienced an NDE?

Mark McMorris comes to mind. In March 2017, McMorris, a top competitor in slopestyle and big air, hit a tree while filming in the Whistler backcountry. The result was a broken jaw, a broken left arm, a pelvis fracture, rib fractures, a collapsed lung and a ruptured spleen that could have killed him from internal bleeding. When I asked him what his relationship was with his own mortality before the accident, he was blunt: “I didn’t think about it ever at all.”

Mark said prior to the accident he felt “pretty damn invincible.” Even coming back from a broken femur in 2016 didn’t really slow him down. But colliding with the tree changed his outlook. “I couldn’t believe it when I woke up,” he said. “I was like, ‘Oh man, I’m here.’”

Since then, Mark’s relationship with mortality has changed for the better. He is more present, appreciative and grateful now. Mark has also grown psychologically from the experience, taking calculated risks now instead of loose ones. Essentially, he’s now more likely to think things through in terms of risk.

It’s been more than two years since Mark’s near-death experience and it doesn’t seem to have affected his athleticism. In fact, he feels his riding is more consistent than it’s ever been. “I’m doing everything I can to be as athletic and mobile as possible,” he said. “I was a little bit scared of everything for a while, but I’m feeling way better now and pushing myself a lot again, and not really thinking about it. I don’t think [the accident] is acting as an anchor anymore—it’s never going to be fully erased, but it’s better than it was.”

I asked Mark if he has any words of wisdom for anyone trying to process an NDE. “Try and use it as fuel,” he replied. “It’s definitely energizing, and it can be negative energy, but it’s pretty positive when you realize you get a second chance. So you gotta just harness it all in and enjoy it.”

Mark has a strong sense of purpose. He’s also been through a profound metaphysical experience. And that’s inspiring for someone who doesn’t know whether they should keep pushing it, or, in Dr. Woodman’s words, “develop a new relationship with the high-risk environment.”

Dr. Woodman’s Agentic Emotion Regulation Theory is intriguing. The idea that, when I am standing atop a sketchy line, I am dealing with anxiety and emotions I am otherwise unable to process is inspiring. I have never been great at expressing my emotions. I have trouble recognizing my anxiety. I’ve always been good at handling fear. Those moments have always been when I feel the strongest sense of who I am, where I am, and what I’m doing. The fear of what’s on the other side of a cornice is a lot simpler than the fear of social rejection.

Perhaps, in the long run, I’ll become a more confident person as a result of my NDE. For now, I’m questioning the risk involved in serious backcountry lines. McMorris has found a way to use his NDE as fuel, so maybe there’s hope for me? Or maybe it’s all just one big theory.

Regardless, if I find myself a little more scared than usual this season, I hope to remember the words of famed alpinist Reinhold Messner:

“Fear... and the state between survival and death are such strong experiences that we want them again and again. We become addicted. Strangely, we strive to come back safely and being back, we seek to return, once more, to danger.”

The Snowboarder's Journal - frequency 17.4

THE OTHER SIDE

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