The role of coping dispositions in predicting coping with a potentially traumatic event (PTE; situational coping) has been bypassed. We explored the degree to which the dispositional coping of 103 mountain rescuers predicted coping with their last PTE. Dispositional venting of emotions and turning to religion explained more than half of the variance in the use of the same strategy to cope with the PTE. Most coping dispositions predicted about 30% to 40% of the variance in comparable situational coping. Dispositional denial did not predict situational use of denial. Multivariate dispositional coping style explained a great deal of the variance in most situational coping responses. Dispositional coping was more relevant than situational to participants' global psychological distress and explained about one-fourth of the variance in distress. These results suggest that most dispositional styles considerably impact coping with PTE but to the extent that varies across different coping styles.