[taco.vidal]

More details of the night of the crash and what led up to it.

http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/c...well-1.3961869

Feb. 5, 2016, began as many other Friday nights for the eight teenagers.

Danny Spalding, David Carr and the Caldwells were attending a youth group run by the Rocky Mountain Calvary Chapel in Calgary.

Spalding's two mountain biking friends from Wetaskiwin, Alta. — brothers Wilson and Eric Schultz — were in town for the weekend and tagged along.

Hettinga and Mark Lyons were playing basketball at their high school, the Heritage Christian Academy.

"I think of this crew as kind of like 'youth group plus church friends plus a few others.' We are all Christians. That's how we all came together," said Carr, now 19.

But the plan to go "sledding" or take plastic toboggans down the bobsled track at Canada Olympic Park had been in the works ever since it was successfully tried a week earlier by three of the teens: Spalding, Hettinga and Evan Caldwell.

"It's scary…. The first time we did it we didn't know what to expect," said Spalding. "But after that, for me anyway, I just felt that it was the perfect thing. It gets your adrenalin going, but there's no way it could go wrong."

On that first night, the trio used helmets and head lamps. They did a few laps. At first it was one person per sled, but Hettinga thought they weren't going fast enough.

"Me and Evan came to a stop a couple of times: we were going too slow," Hettinga remembered.

"It was definitely not too dangerous that time, then we decided to double up and go a lot faster down it."

The worst that could happen — they thought — was they'd fall off their sleds and slide to a stop further down the track.

So as they shared their stories, boasting, they decided to return with more friends.

The return

On Feb. 5, 2016, the group of eight met at the top of the hill.

They scaled the perimeter fence with three plastic sleds in hand and headed towards the platform of the track.

It was shortly after midnight on Feb. 6, and they recall it being fairly dark with the exception of a few streetlights.

This time there would be no head lamps and no helmets.

"The [fact that] they had gone before took out a lot of doubts in our minds about just like normal precautions you would take for something like that, like checking ahead, and everything, just kinda slipped under the radar," said Wilson Schultz.

"I remember flying around the corner and seeing something and then I blacked out," said Hettinga.

He woke up moments later and couldn't speak or see.

"I thought I was dead for sure. I thought I was going to bleed out and die," he said. "I was starting to struggle to breathe because stuff was lodged in the back of my throat."

Hettinga and Lyons from the first sled ended up lying together in a corner of the track under a tarp, with major head and facial injuries. They didn't know immediately that their sledding mate, Evan Caldwell, had been killed, falling off the track near the barrier.

Back on the platform, the remaining teens were unaware of any problems. When Jordan Caldwell gave a push-off to the second sled, he recited the Lord's Prayer.

Wilson Schultz believes those last words saved his trio from serious harm.

Schultz broke his ankle, while his brother Eric and Spalding walked away.

"It's a miracle we passed through it," he said.

"It was right in front of us and then all of a sudden we were just through it."

There are fewer details about what exactly happened on the third sled, other than it hit the barrier, too. Jordan Caldwell was killed and Carr received a brain injury that impaired his memory.

"I'm lucky enough not to remember any of it, because it's still been hard: just the grief itself and the loss of a lot of things including functions of my body and also really, really good friends," said Carr, whose injury affects the right side of his body. He still faces another year of recovery.

First responders found the injured teens scattered along the track.