A couple learn something about driving--and themselves--in the aftermath of an accident.

It is amazing how quiet a disaster can be.

I’m sure the owls, coyotes and other nocturnal wildlife got an earful, but I heard nothing from the time the horizon started tilting until I slowly swiveled my head and heard myself asking my wife not to move--in case we weren’t lodged very firmly in the tree.

I knew I was hanging upside down, held into my seat by my lap and shoulder belts, and knew she was upside down too. It took a few nanoseconds for the rest to sink in.

We’d slipped off the icy road and down the side of a mountain. We were stuck in a tree, upside down. Broken glass was everywhere, neither of us seemed to be hurt, and--Oh, God!--I would never hear the end of it.

I’d rolled my sport-utility vehicle. Lost control. The insurance company was gonna love this. How did it happen? And how were we going to get out?

It’s been more than a year now, but what I like to call “The Incident at Yosemite” is still intensely clear. So are the lessons I learned.

Obviously, we survived. In fact, the 1992 Mazda Navajo on which I had lavished care for seven years and 84,000 miles repaid us handsomely, surrendering glass and sheet metal to protect us. It was pronounced a total loss. But we walked away uninjured.

We got into the fix we were in because of a last-minute decision to hit the highway and spend a few pre-Christmas days in the snow at our favorite national park. The hotel (the famed Ahwahnee) had rooms, the weather forecast was for clear days, gas was cheap, and the Navajo (a thinly disguised version of the Ford Explorer Sport) was running great.

I love driving in the mountains. So the 10 hours or so we would spend delivering our daughter to her friends’ cabin at Mammoth Mountain, then heading up the backside of the Sierra Nevada range to Lake Tahoe, down into the Central Valley and then back up into Yosemite, was going to be a pleasant trip, providing lots of great scenery and time to relax.

Lesson One: Don’t Believe the Weather Forecasters. Dec. 20, 1998, was forecast to be a sunny, breezy day all along our route. But as we left Mammoth, about five hours into our trip, a blizzard began blowing. An unexpected Arctic storm that dumped snow on San Francisco and on the Central Valley that day had reached us.

The 160-mile drive from Mammoth to Lake Tahoe took almost eight hours. We drove the entire distance through a white sleet, four-wheel drive engaged, speedometer hovering around 20.

Snow kept falling well past Tahoe, and we were almost to the bottom of the mountain, just east of Sacramento, before the California Highway Patrol started taking down the “Danger Icy Conditions” and “Chains or 4WD Required” signs.

We stopped a little before 11 p.m. and called the Ahwahnee to see if the roads into the park were open. They were, we were assured, and with a four-wheel-drive SUV and all-terrain tires, we should have no problem getting there.

Lesson Two: Don’t Trust ‘Em Just ‘Cause They’re the Locals. The road out of Manteca and up into Yosemite was OK for about 45 minutes. Then it turned into two lanes of snow-covered ice. Still, the road signs said four-wheel-drive trucks like ours were fine. The chains I carried wouldn’t be needed.

By keeping it to a sensible 15 miles an hour--sometimes less--and enjoying the nighttime scenery, we found that the miles passed pretty smoothly. So on we pressed.

Just before we hit Crane Flat, inside the park but well up from the floor of the valley, I turned to my wife and--honest, I’m not making this up--said: “Hey, I bet you never thought you’d see the day I’d drive this slowly in the mountains.”

About 15 miles later, we were winding our way down to the valley floor. I was singing “Proud Mary” with Tina Turner on the radio. I glanced at my speedometer (and saw I was going about 10 mph) and began steering into a sweeping left-hand curve.

But as I turned the wheel, the truck kept going straight.

I saw a snowbank at the edge of the road and thought, “Damn! It’s got rocks inside and I’m gonna slide into ‘em and scratch up the side.” Then we were through the snow--no rocks to stop us--and I turned to my wife and said, “I think we’re going over!”

Then I was upside down.

Lesson Three: Emergency Stuff Is Only Helpful if You Can Get to It. When we rolled, the concussion blew out the back windows. That’s supposed to happen. It minimizes broken glass. But when you carry your flares, flashlights, first aid, chains and luggage in the back and are rolling down a mountain, things have a tendency to fall out through those big holes.

I recall forcing a smile at one point and commenting that this was not a great way to start a vacation. Then we dropped from our seat belts, and my wife, far more limber than I, crawled past the ice chest that was wedged in the back seat and blocking most of the path to the rear of the truck. Once in the back, she discovered that the stuff we needed wasn’t there. We never did find it. And because we had both quit smoking years before, we didn’t even have a match.

These days, I always carry a flashlight, pocketknife and light stick in the glove compartment, where it won’t be thrown clear and where I can get to it even if access to the back of the vehicle is blocked. And the next time we head into snow country, appropriate emergency gear will be in a nylon bag under the front seats.

Lesson Four: Carry a Cell Phone and Keep It Charged. After climbing out of the truck through the moon roof--the only time I would use it in seven years--I climbed back up to the road and started dialing 911. Cell phones often fail to work in the mountains, but I figured it was going to be a cold and lonely night and I might as well dial while I still had a charged battery.

It took about 10 minutes of repeated “no service” messages, but finally I hit a clear spot as I walked up and down the deserted road. I could barely hear the emergency operator through the crackle of static, but I shouted out what had happened and where I thought we were and heard her say she would call it in to the U.S. Forest Service.

And as I hung up and ran to the side of the road to yell the good news down to my wife, I saw a pulsing yellow light reflecting in a snowbank down the road.

Lesson Five: Never Begrudge Your Taxes. The People Whose Salaries They Pay May Save Your Neck Some Day. It was from a Forest Service road grader. The stunned driver--he was not expecting a pedestrian in his path at 1:30 a.m.--radioed in our location and condition, helped my wife climb up to the road and into his heated cab and stayed with us until the rangers arrived.

I wound up with a citation for an offense called “mountain driving” and a truck damaged as much by being hauled sideways up the mountain as by the low-speed rollover itself. But we were not hurt, and I certainly understood the need to get the truck off the hill as quickly as possible, before its vital fluids started leaking and contaminating the area.

And the rangers spent nearly two hours in hip-deep snow on a steep, slippery mountainside looking for our things and pawing through the debris scattered inside our truck to find important insurance and registration papers. They reassured us that the accident was really that--an accident--and confided that the ice was so bad that even some rangers had slid off the roads that day.

Lesson Six: No Matter How Much You Document Its Worth, Your Insurance Company Will Never Give You Enough to Replace Your Vehicle. After we filed insurance reports, the adjuster told us the $7,000 in needed repairs was about all the Navajo was worth, so it was being declared a total loss.

And it didn’t matter that I had added more than $3,000 worth of handling and performance improvements in the previous year. The stuff that helps get you more money for your vehicle in an insurance payoff, we were told, is stuff that’s visual, like new paint and fancy wheels.

Lesson Seven: Don’t Let an Insurer Saddle You With Blame if It Isn’t Deserved. When my insurer sent me the letter announcing I was more than 50% to blame for the accident and would probably see my rates rise, I didn’t flip out.

I took several deep breaths, then sat down and wrote back. The facts were that in an unexpected winter storm I slid on an ice patch while heading downhill at 10 mph on a road the U.S. government had posted as open and drivable. That certainly seemed to me to constitute a no-fault accident, I argued.

And guess what. The insurer agreed.

Even my wife agreed. Someday, she says, she might even be willing to head back to Yosemite in the winter with me behind the wheel.

Lesson Eight: Know Your Limits, and Do Something About Them. A few months after replacing the SUV with an all-wheel-drive station wagon, I enrolled myself and the car in the off-road safety course taught up in Gorman by the chief instructor for the California Assn. of 4-Wheel Drive Clubs. And I’m looking for a winter driving school.

*

Times staff writer John O’Dell covers the auto industry for the Business section and Highway 1. He can be reached at john.odell@latimes.com.

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Accidents 101

You may never find yourself in the predicament that faced the O’Dells, but the lessons they learned are worth sharing:

* Check your vehicle: Make sure tires are properly inflated and have plenty of tread; that oil and other fluid levels are correct; that brakes are not worn out. A few dollars spent preparing can save thousands in emergency repairs.

* Carry an emergency kit: Flares, flashlight, spare batteries, a sharp pocketknife, basic tools, warm clothing and spare water are essential. Pack your kit where you can get to it, in a nylon pack or plastic box under the seats or in a door panel.

* Check the weather: But prepare your emergency supplies for extremes. Online weather reports from Yahoo or WeatherChannel.com can provide up-to-date forecasts along your route.

* Carry a cell phone: And make sure the battery is charged. They won’t work everywhere, but cell phones can make emergency calls possible from remote locations. Some suppliers offer emergency-only phones at discounted rates.

* Be a skeptic: Exploring back roads is fun, but just because someone says a road is passable doesn’t make it so.