So yah, I came really close to dying/being severely maimed yesterday and it went a little something like this:
Friend of mine knows the pro at a private course near us and he also has a friend coming in from Colorado yesterday, so we made this tee time a couple weeks ago and we are playing no matter what. Obv we have a nor'easter sitting on top of us all day blowing rain horizontal, but **** that we're golfing. They are in one cart, I am alone in the other.
We get to #7 which is a long par 5. Teeing off, I spray it right into the woods. Driving away from the tee there is a huge slope in front of me I can't see over. The golf cart shown(arrow) in the image below is basically the top of the slope. It slopes about 30 degrees back to the cart path, then after the cart path it gets really, really steep to like 45 degrees and drops straight down into the pond(X) with huge trees lining the edges of this pond:
So just as the image shows, I'm driving up the path and veer off it and start climbing up this huge slope. Everything is totally sogged out, but the cart is moving up the slope fine. Well **** me, I get to near the top where I can see over the ridge and then take my foot off the gas and plan to just peel off to the left and go back to my ball.
To my abject horror, as soon as I stop the ****ing cart starts sliding back down the hill. I'm already turned left a little, so on top of that I start doing a 360 slowly sliding down the hill. I'm stomping the brake but it is doing nothing. Then the slow spin gets faster and things literally begin moving in slo-mo. The other two guys are watching this from the top of this ridge, and now I'm picking up speed and careening to the next even steeper ridge which I see is leading down to a pond with huge trees everywhere. My mind is just racing and I'm already envisioning this cart sliding down into oblivion and smashing at least a couple trees on its way into the pond. Most likely rolling down once it pass over the cart path.
This 3 seconds feels like an eternity and it's really amazing how many things went through my head during that 3 seconds, but at this exact juncture my mind tells me I need to bail out of this cart NOW or I am seriously ****ed. I am less than a fraction of a second away from bailing, my foot has been pressed down hard on the brake the entire time, and the exact moment I am about to bail out letting the cart roll down into the ravine the two back tires of the cart hit the path and I go 'rrrt...', coming to a complete stop. Ta Da!
The two guys I'm with look like they've just seen a ghost and none of us can believe how lucky I just got. I look up the ridge and see my tire tracks making this sickening Helix Of Death shown on the image. Also, had I hit the cart path any way but pointing directly uphill, which I was, the cart would have insta-flipped and began tumbling down the next slope into the pond.
Better luck next time, 2+2.