It had all the makings of the perfect day trip: my friend Mike and I had planned to walk to the top of the Sandia mountain range in New Mexico to catch the sunset and then take the cable car down. It was up a wide, gently inclining track, so easy that I was wearing sandals. But as we set off we didn't realise that the previous days of heavy rain had washed away the track, and we soon strayed from the path. Before long, we were clambering over boulders.

Then the weather closed in; a storm was approaching. We continued to head upwards - Mike reassured me that it was the right way, and I felt I had to trust him. After hours of scrabbling through bushes and clambering over rocks, I started to cry. "I'm sorry," Mike said, "I'll get us out of this." But it was the blind leading the blind.

Night was falling, and we'd been walking for seven hours, so I decided to take control. We could see the cable car system in the distance and I suggested we head towards it to follow it down. I felt a lot calmer - until we came to a steep rock face made up of a series of small ledges. We convinced ourselves that we could somehow hop down from ledge to ledge. Mike, being taller, was able to tackle wider gaps than me.

I had one foot wedged in a crack and the other trying to find a foothold when I felt myself losing my grip. I fell down the sheer face - more than 60m - crashing against rocks as I went. After seven tumbles, I came to a halt and could hear Mike calling my name. "I'm here, I'm fine," I tried to say, but nothing came out. Then I began to check my body. I wiggled my toes and my fingers. I ran my tongue over my teeth. I searched my face and head with my fingers - it was warm and wet. I realised I'd just touched my skull.

When Mike reached me, his face was blanched with fear, so I ended up reassuring him. He tied a T-shirt around my shin, where a wide strip of skin had been torn off, and one around my head. He started to tug at me, trying to get me to walk, but I couldn't move. He went to get help and as he walked off, we called out to each other, to keep in contact as long as we could. Before long, his cries were replaced by gusts of wind and I tried not to shake - the heat of the day had gone, and it was now cold and dark. I felt spiders crawl over me and then the light patter of rain.

I started to sing Ten Green Bottles. Then I updated it to A Thousand Green Bottles, but as I drifted in and out of consciousness, I kept losing count. At 2am, I was staring up at the mountain when I saw a bright light behind it. I began to reach out for it - I was ready to give up - when in the back of my mind a voice said, "It's not your time yet."

About three hours later, I heard a helicopter and ripped off the T-shirt around my head and started to wave it, shouting and screaming. It was the rescue team that Mike had alerted - apparently there were five search parties out looking for me through the night.

To my utter relief, they saw me and I was airlifted to hospital. There, I learned the full extent of my injuries: as well as a broken pelvis, I had broken my neck and dislocated part of my spinal cord. I had the same injury as Christopher Reeve (Superman) had had, and before operating the surgeon warned me I could be a quadriplegic.

Thanks to surgery, I escaped paralysis, but the doctors said I needed three months in hospital. I was so angry and embarrassed about what had happened that I pushed myself hard to get better; 12 days later I was well enough to fly home.

Four weeks later, I was back at university. I was a mess, though, inside and out, on crutches and in a neck brace. I couldn't stand for more than a few minutes. Mike and I met up a few times, but it was a torment. He used to be my soulmate, but now there was a chasm between us. When he visited me in hospital, he was silent and awkward; he felt he was to blame for the accident. I blamed myself, but I did feel upset and rejected by him. We couldn't look at each other the same way again.

Therapy helped me come to terms with my demons, but a big step was competing in an international canoe marathon to raise money for Spinal Research. I know I'm amazingly lucky to have survived, but I need to help others who have been through the same thing, finally to put that night on the mountain behind me.

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