A man crawled for over 11 hours down a Utah mountain after his car fell and flipped down a cliff. Jacob “Jake” Schmitt was driving on the Uinta Mountains with his dog Buddy on July 20 when the wild accident happened, reported PEOPLE.
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Car Flipped 15-20 Times Down Mountain, Forcing Man To Crawl Over 11 Hours With Broken Leg
According to his GoFundMe, Jake lost control of his side-by-side vehicle and rolled off a cliff. “In the crash, Jake sustained a broken leg, fractured ankles, and broken ribs,” it wrote.
Jake lost his phone during the accident, leaving him with no light except for the tiny one on Buddy’s collar. Then, Jake did something “extraordinary,” as the description said. Jake managed to splint his broken leg and crawl for miles down the mountain.
It took more than 11 hours to make the difficult trek down, especially since it was at night. He finally reached his truck, which, according to his interview with FOX 13, probably flipped 15 to 20 times.
“Probably the second or third flip is when it kind of sort of rag-dolled me out,” said Jake.
Luckily, Buddy was okay after the accident and would stick by his owner’s side the entire way. “I would catch up to him, and then I would nudge him with my face, and he would get up and he would take another break,” Jake said. “And now I kind of realized it wasn’t really him falling asleep, it was him kind of just giving me, giving me a place to go.”
Once he got to his truck, he drove to The Oakly Diner and asked the staff to call 911. First responders rushed Jake to Park City Hospital. Meanwhile, the Oakley Fire Station took good care of Buddy and the truck until they could contact his family.
Buddy and Jake’s reunion at the hospital was a touching moment. The GoFundMe described it as “nothing short of moving” and a “powerful moment of loyalty, love, and survival.”
Now in recovery mode, this fundraiser hopes to help support Jake’s medical journey. He not only had a broken leg, but many other injuries. “A couple broken ribs on this side, a broken right ankle, I believe,” said Jake. “Left ankle, and then left tibia and fibula, and then about a bruise everywhere you can have it.”
Despite the severity of the accident, Jake is ready to go out hunting again. He was initially driving up those mountains to go deer hunting. Now, he’s sharing advice for others who do the same.
“Learn how to do everything with nothing, self-rescue,” said Jake. “Figure out how to do that. Otherwise, I’d still be laying there.”