Gary Coleman has already died once.

He was the co-pilot aboard Rocky Mountain Airways Flight 217 that crashed Dec. 4, 1978, on snow-shrouded Buffalo Pass on an aborted trip to Denver from Steamboat Springs.

He was rescued and brought to a Kremmling hospital, suffering a ruptured spleen and hypothermia.

"They pronounced me dead on the table," Coleman said. "They couldn't find a pulse, couldn't detect any vital signs."

He has a vivid memory of an out-of-body experience, walking into a bright light, seeing his first dog, Brownie, run up to him, seeing a great-uncle, Adolph, in the background.

"I was allowed to turn around and come back," he said.

That's what he and pilot Scott Allan Klopfenstein were desperately trying to do when their plane crashed - turn it around and get back to Steamboat Springs.

On that long-ago December evening, Coleman and Klopfenstein had taken off in a twin- engine plane from Steamboat Springs. They checked forecasts - no severe downdrafts, light icing. They could see stars and sky straight up, and figured they could fly over a winter storm to the east, Coleman said.

Their plane was equipped with a rubber bladder on the leading edge of the wings. When ice formed, the bladders would inflate, cracking the ice to be swept away.

"It was worse than what we'd thought," Coleman said Tuesday in Boulder. "We were picking up a lot of ice. It was unforecast and beyond anything I'd ever flown in."

The bladders couldn't break off enough of the ice, which formed on the top and bottom of the wings. The weight of the ice and powerful downdrafts prevented them from climbing above the storm. So they made a gradual turn back to Steamboat.

They didn't know it, but they kept losing altitude. The weather pressure had changed so much it skewed their altimeter reading, which registered that they were 300 feet higher than they actually were.

Their antenna iced over, causing communication problems with air traffic controllers in Longmont.

Then another piece of equipment went on the fritz. They didn't know where they were.

"The heated windshield iced over - a windshield heated so hot you couldn't touch it," Coleman said. "I saw a lightning bolt, or a spark on my right side."

It was actually sparks from a power-line tower that they clipped with their right wing. That part of the accident proved providential. The brush with the tower caused lights to flicker in Kremmling and Walden, which helped rescuers narrow their search.

"About 50 feet from the ground, I saw a dark spot and a light spot," Coleman said. "I swung the rudder to the white spot."

He later was told the black spot was a cliff.

The plane rolled and hit into the snowy hillside. The windscreen shattered. Coleman was buried up to his neck in snow, still in his co-pilot's seat. Passenger Jon Pratt dug out Coleman to his chest.

Being buried in snow was also good for Coleman.

"It kept me from bleeding out," he said.

Klopfenstein died four days after the crash.

Coleman gave up flying commercially about 18 months later.

"I couldn't fly at night in a snowstorm," he said. "I had a bad enough time trying to fly at night period."

Coleman grew up in Iowa. His family moved to Colorado when he was a high school senior, and he attended the University of Colorado off and on.

Coleman and his brothers formed a flight club, pooling their money to buy a plane and pay for lessons. A few years later, friends told Coleman that Rocky Mountain Airways was hiring. So he hired on.

At 65, Coleman is still fit. Nowadays, he runs Ride-a-Kart in Estes Park. He also is a ski instructor at Beaver Creek.

He's still bothered, three dec ades later, by guilt that he survived and his pilot didn't.

"You try not to dwell on it," he said.

He'd rather focus on other things.

"You come so close, you realize it's not forever," he said. "I take care of myself. I have a real appreciation for things that could slip by the wayside. I appreciate music more. I appreciate quiet time with my wife, Debi, and daughter, Kelly."

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