I originally posted this in r/askmen about "worst experiences ever." I was messaged that the folks at r/survival might want to hear about my experience, so here goes nothing.TL:DR Jeep accident in the middle of nowhere.
Had a dream job as a seasonal employee at a National Park. Went out on a jeep trail with a buddy. We leave the park and I came to a fork in the road, I chose the more difficult one. After several miles of crazy trail, I mean literally one of the craziest roads I've every traversed in 10 years of owning and using a jeep, we cross a stream, and go up a hill, right on the edge of a cliff. The roads is suddenly smooth, there are no more boulders and dropoffs to navigate, so of course I say, "looks like we're in the clear!"
Then suddenly, the jeep starts to tilt, my buddy starts screaming "Oh god, oh god." I look at him as we are leaning, all I can see is a cloud of dust through his open doorway, and then, we are gone. The road has collapsed along the cliff edge. We roll about 35 feet down the cliff, it's a full barrel roll. It seemed to happen in slow motion, I'm staring straight ahead, gripping the steering wheel, just waiting this out, listening to the loud CLANGS as the sides and roof roll and hit the cliff, and then we're freefalling and BAM!!!
The windshield spiderwebs, the passenger side wheel pops, and I'm blinded for a second by the most intense glare in my life.I'm wide awake, the glare gradually fading away, and it feels like I had just been gut punched harder than anyone in history, and I am just sucking in the wind that was knocked out of me for like two minutes. Once that's over, I know I'm hurt bad in my back. I had suffered a slipped disc weightlifting years before and figured I just aggravated it worse than it had ever been. I manage to unbuckle my seatbelt and lay my seat back as far as it will go in a desperate attempt to get flat, and just want to wait for the pain to go away all while thinking, "This is actually happening,
I'm so fucked, I'm so fucked".
My buddy is hurt worse, he's slumped over and bleeding on my shorts.Now I'm incredibly worried, but I'm also in so much pain he's not my priority, but he started to moan in pain and I was so relieved. He comes too, he's in a ton of pain and begs me to lay his chair back. In fact, he starts to freak out, because he can't feel his legs, he can barely move.Mentally I'm freaking out, I don't want to even think about the P-word.
I tell my buddy to stay calm and not to move. I struggle to get out of my jeep, the pain is crippling. I make my way over to the passenger side, manage to pull out the back seat of my jeep that had popped out and lean my buddy's seat back. I collapse from the pain on the bank of the stream, and lie there for a few minutes until the red ants start to swarm me and I force myself to get up. I get back in the jeep, but not before filling an empty nalgene bottle with dirty stream water, it tastes like we were in a cow pasture (fun fact, we were).
Anyway, I'm lying down and thinking about how fucked this is. I'm telling my buddy, "This is SO fucked." We are miles from civilization on a pretty obscure, unmaintained jeep road, and there's no phone service. Because we're not total idiots me and my buddy had shared our general plan with his girlfriend (who also worked at the park) that if were not back by 10 p.m, were in trouble.
Well, this accident happened around 6:15 p.m. I'm in a ton of pain and thinking, "I'll wait an hour, then get help, I want to rest."Meanwhile my buddy (who ironically enough completed Search and Rescue training that day) starts asking if his chair can be leaned back anymore. I tell him no and he goes "ok, ok, no worries man" but in 30 seconds he asks again if I can lean his chair back more.
Red flags go off in my head, I'm thinking concussion. I spend the next 30 minutes telling him over and over again his chair can't be leaned back anymore. Eventually he starts asking what happened. "We rolled off a cliff," I tell him. "We rolled off a cliff?" he asks. "Yes about 25, 30 feet" I say. "Well, how about we drive out of there?" is his next question. "The jeep is fucked," I say. "Does anyone knows where we are?" is the third question. "Yes, your girlfriend back in Fruita." I tell him. "I have a girlfriend?" is his reply. I tell him she'll know something is up at 10 p.m.
After I answer these questions for him, he contemplates the situation, and asks again "What happened?"So yeah, I'm like 100% sure he has a concussion. I answer his questions again. And again. I decide I can't get help now, between the inability to move and head injury, my buddy can't be left alone. I also think we'll be rescued later that night, so I tell him we just have to wait until 9 for his girlfriend to freak out and tell the Law Enforcement rangers, and then a few more hours until they find us.
I tell him we just have to wait, and then he's going to enjoy the best helicopter ride and have an amazing hospital room. He asks again what happened, and I we go through his question cycle for a few hours more, only being interrupted by him occasionally freaking out that he can't feel his legs.During this time I find an emergency kit I keep in my car, filled with two emergency blankets, glow sticks, hand warmers (that don't work), a dead flashlight, and a whistle.
Even though it's still warm, we're in high desert terrain, and I know it will be in the 40s that night. The jeep doesn't have doors or windows (though the soft top is up) and we're both wearing t-shirts, shorts and flip flops. I try my best to wrap him in the blanket, and also give him a wool cap and gloves I have in a duffel bag I keep in my car. I wrap myself up too as the darkness gradual falls.
In the distance we begin to hear a lot of loud Moo's. My buddy starts freaking out. The public land were in is open pasture for cattle, and we are spooking a nearby herd. I can't see that well through the spider-webbed windshield and the sunset, but apparently they are nearby. My buddy thinks we are going to be attacked, but I tell him we'll be fine. Truthfully, I am worried, since spooked cows might act defensive if they feel threatened, we both really can't move, and how embarrassing would that be to survive a fall off a cliff to get killed by fucking scared cows?
I honk the horn of the jeep, and I never see any cows as it becomes dark, but we do hear them for a couple hours more.So yeah, basically the evening consisted of my answering the same exact questions from my buddy, who has no idea he's even a park guide, let alone out in a western national park. I'm in pain and just telling myself only a few hours more, a couple hours more, an hour more, and now people should know that something's up.
Even though 10 P.M. was our "get nervous" time for his girlfriend, I was confident she'd be freaking out by 9 P.M and we'd be rescued soon.Around 10 I am listening for anything. I start honking the horn. Anytime I hear a plane or helicopter I flash the brights on my jeep. I keep trying to call 911 because even with no service there can be a small chance it'll connect to a tower in emergency situations. It starts to get cold.
My buddy says his feet are freezing, he keeps pulling up the emergency blanket and I can't fix it, because when I lean over the pain is so intense I want to throw up, but a few times I feel sympathy and decide to suffer through getting the blanket properly wrapped around my injured buddy. I also pull out a big map of the park and surrounding areas, and try to put it over his feet, as well as my empty duffel bag.
It's cold, but I know it's not cold enough for us to freeze to death or suffer frostbit, but every little bit will make us slightly more comfortable.Through the night, I gradually lose patience, between answering the same questions over and over and over and over and over and over again, and because my buddy keeps messing up his blanket, and it is so, so painful to try and fix. He constantly is trying to adjust his body on his seat, we both wish we could be lying completely flat but our seats only lay back so far; he screams in pain, and then freaks out because he realizes out he can't feel his legs.
He keep forgetting this fact all night, and it is a shitshow every 20 minutes. I observe him, he can move his legs and feet to an extent, so I'm feeling more positive he's not paralyzed, but I know it's still a huge deal and he should be staying steal. I stick an arm under his blanket, and demand he grab it with his hands, to keep us a little more warm and to keep him still. We lie back, in the cold night, him tightly clutching my arm as I press down on his chest in a desperate attempt to stay warm and keep him still.
Around 1 am, I come to conclusion that rescue will not be happening tonight. I still flash my brights every time I think there's a plane or helicopter flying overhead, but I figure it's meaningless. I'm freezing cold, in a ton of pain, and am at my whits end answering the same questions over and over and over again. Actually, I begin to snap at him, "I've answered this question at least 200 fucking times, and you're going to forget it in 5 minutes."
He's taken aback. "Sorry buddy, sorry buddy," he meekly replies, before I apologize and tell him he won't remember this conversation in 5 minutes anyway. And so it go's for another few hours. At least it's a new conversation to add to the cycle. I'm annoyed that we're not going to rescued soon. I tell my buddy to think of warm hospital beds and how great that helicopter ride is going to be. I keep honking the horn at this point to keep us awake.
Had a dream job as a seasonal employee at a National Park. Went out on a jeep trail with a buddy. We leave the park and I came to a fork in the road, I chose the more difficult one. After several miles of crazy trail, I mean literally one of the craziest roads I've every traversed in 10 years of owning and using a jeep, we cross a stream, and go up a hill, right on the edge of a cliff. The roads is suddenly smooth, there are no more boulders and dropoffs to navigate, so of course I say, "looks like we're in the clear!"
Then suddenly, the jeep starts to tilt, my buddy starts screaming "Oh god, oh god." I look at him as we are leaning, all I can see is a cloud of dust through his open doorway, and then, we are gone. The road has collapsed along the cliff edge. We roll about 35 feet down the cliff, it's a full barrel roll. It seemed to happen in slow motion, I'm staring straight ahead, gripping the steering wheel, just waiting this out, listening to the loud CLANGS as the sides and roof roll and hit the cliff, and then we're freefalling and BAM!!!
The windshield spiderwebs, the passenger side wheel pops, and I'm blinded for a second by the most intense glare in my life.I'm wide awake, the glare gradually fading away, and it feels like I had just been gut punched harder than anyone in history, and I am just sucking in the wind that was knocked out of me for like two minutes. Once that's over, I know I'm hurt bad in my back. I had suffered a slipped disc weightlifting years before and figured I just aggravated it worse than it had ever been. I manage to unbuckle my seatbelt and lay my seat back as far as it will go in a desperate attempt to get flat, and just want to wait for the pain to go away all while thinking, "This is actually happening,
I'm so fucked, I'm so fucked".
My buddy is hurt worse, he's slumped over and bleeding on my shorts.Now I'm incredibly worried, but I'm also in so much pain he's not my priority, but he started to moan in pain and I was so relieved. He comes too, he's in a ton of pain and begs me to lay his chair back. In fact, he starts to freak out, because he can't feel his legs, he can barely move.Mentally I'm freaking out, I don't want to even think about the P-word.
I tell my buddy to stay calm and not to move. I struggle to get out of my jeep, the pain is crippling. I make my way over to the passenger side, manage to pull out the back seat of my jeep that had popped out and lean my buddy's seat back. I collapse from the pain on the bank of the stream, and lie there for a few minutes until the red ants start to swarm me and I force myself to get up. I get back in the jeep, but not before filling an empty nalgene bottle with dirty stream water, it tastes like we were in a cow pasture (fun fact, we were).
Anyway, I'm lying down and thinking about how fucked this is. I'm telling my buddy, "This is SO fucked." We are miles from civilization on a pretty obscure, unmaintained jeep road, and there's no phone service. Because we're not total idiots me and my buddy had shared our general plan with his girlfriend (who also worked at the park) that if were not back by 10 p.m, were in trouble.
Well, this accident happened around 6:15 p.m. I'm in a ton of pain and thinking, "I'll wait an hour, then get help, I want to rest."Meanwhile my buddy (who ironically enough completed Search and Rescue training that day) starts asking if his chair can be leaned back anymore. I tell him no and he goes "ok, ok, no worries man" but in 30 seconds he asks again if I can lean his chair back more.
Red flags go off in my head, I'm thinking concussion. I spend the next 30 minutes telling him over and over again his chair can't be leaned back anymore. Eventually he starts asking what happened. "We rolled off a cliff," I tell him. "We rolled off a cliff?" he asks. "Yes about 25, 30 feet" I say. "Well, how about we drive out of there?" is his next question. "The jeep is fucked," I say. "Does anyone knows where we are?" is the third question. "Yes, your girlfriend back in Fruita." I tell him. "I have a girlfriend?" is his reply. I tell him she'll know something is up at 10 p.m.
After I answer these questions for him, he contemplates the situation, and asks again "What happened?"So yeah, I'm like 100% sure he has a concussion. I answer his questions again. And again. I decide I can't get help now, between the inability to move and head injury, my buddy can't be left alone. I also think we'll be rescued later that night, so I tell him we just have to wait until 9 for his girlfriend to freak out and tell the Law Enforcement rangers, and then a few more hours until they find us.
I tell him we just have to wait, and then he's going to enjoy the best helicopter ride and have an amazing hospital room. He asks again what happened, and I we go through his question cycle for a few hours more, only being interrupted by him occasionally freaking out that he can't feel his legs.During this time I find an emergency kit I keep in my car, filled with two emergency blankets, glow sticks, hand warmers (that don't work), a dead flashlight, and a whistle.
Even though it's still warm, we're in high desert terrain, and I know it will be in the 40s that night. The jeep doesn't have doors or windows (though the soft top is up) and we're both wearing t-shirts, shorts and flip flops. I try my best to wrap him in the blanket, and also give him a wool cap and gloves I have in a duffel bag I keep in my car. I wrap myself up too as the darkness gradual falls.
In the distance we begin to hear a lot of loud Moo's. My buddy starts freaking out. The public land were in is open pasture for cattle, and we are spooking a nearby herd. I can't see that well through the spider-webbed windshield and the sunset, but apparently they are nearby. My buddy thinks we are going to be attacked, but I tell him we'll be fine. Truthfully, I am worried, since spooked cows might act defensive if they feel threatened, we both really can't move, and how embarrassing would that be to survive a fall off a cliff to get killed by fucking scared cows?
I honk the horn of the jeep, and I never see any cows as it becomes dark, but we do hear them for a couple hours more.So yeah, basically the evening consisted of my answering the same exact questions from my buddy, who has no idea he's even a park guide, let alone out in a western national park. I'm in pain and just telling myself only a few hours more, a couple hours more, an hour more, and now people should know that something's up.
Even though 10 P.M. was our "get nervous" time for his girlfriend, I was confident she'd be freaking out by 9 P.M and we'd be rescued soon.Around 10 I am listening for anything. I start honking the horn. Anytime I hear a plane or helicopter I flash the brights on my jeep. I keep trying to call 911 because even with no service there can be a small chance it'll connect to a tower in emergency situations. It starts to get cold.
My buddy says his feet are freezing, he keeps pulling up the emergency blanket and I can't fix it, because when I lean over the pain is so intense I want to throw up, but a few times I feel sympathy and decide to suffer through getting the blanket properly wrapped around my injured buddy. I also pull out a big map of the park and surrounding areas, and try to put it over his feet, as well as my empty duffel bag.
It's cold, but I know it's not cold enough for us to freeze to death or suffer frostbit, but every little bit will make us slightly more comfortable.Through the night, I gradually lose patience, between answering the same questions over and over and over and over and over and over again, and because my buddy keeps messing up his blanket, and it is so, so painful to try and fix. He constantly is trying to adjust his body on his seat, we both wish we could be lying completely flat but our seats only lay back so far; he screams in pain, and then freaks out because he realizes out he can't feel his legs.
He keep forgetting this fact all night, and it is a shitshow every 20 minutes. I observe him, he can move his legs and feet to an extent, so I'm feeling more positive he's not paralyzed, but I know it's still a huge deal and he should be staying steal. I stick an arm under his blanket, and demand he grab it with his hands, to keep us a little more warm and to keep him still. We lie back, in the cold night, him tightly clutching my arm as I press down on his chest in a desperate attempt to stay warm and keep him still.
Around 1 am, I come to conclusion that rescue will not be happening tonight. I still flash my brights every time I think there's a plane or helicopter flying overhead, but I figure it's meaningless. I'm freezing cold, in a ton of pain, and am at my whits end answering the same questions over and over and over again. Actually, I begin to snap at him, "I've answered this question at least 200 fucking times, and you're going to forget it in 5 minutes."
He's taken aback. "Sorry buddy, sorry buddy," he meekly replies, before I apologize and tell him he won't remember this conversation in 5 minutes anyway. And so it go's for another few hours. At least it's a new conversation to add to the cycle. I'm annoyed that we're not going to rescued soon. I tell my buddy to think of warm hospital beds and how great that helicopter ride is going to be. I keep honking the horn at this point to keep us awake.
Around 3 A.M we are both exhausted, but I can not let my potentially concussed buddy fall asleep. He begins to ramble, about things like how his awesome sister makes the best red gummy bears and how his friends back home are like lizard skyscrapers. I ask him questions and receive nonsense in return. I am so, so, SO relieved he is done asking the same questions over and over again.
When we both start nod off I honk the horn and flash the brights. He gets startled and angry every time I do this "Why are you doing that?!" He groans. I tell him it's so people find us, but I know there's no one out there. I tell him he can't sleep. He begs for sleep. This carries on for more than a couple of hours.
Around 4:30 A.M it gradually begins to get lighter. I am so fucking relieved. At 5 the sky is starting to get clear. It's not until 6:30 A.M that the sun is officially rising, but it's still just freezing cold. I make up my mind that I need to get help as soon as I can. While my buddy cannot look after himself, rescue is many hours off, and I want to make it happen sooner, rather than later.
Also, I cannot stand to hear my buddy ask "What happened?" "Does anyone know where we are?" and "I have a girlfriend?" one more time. Any Search and Rescue party would only know what dirt road we took out of the national park, and we were now well outside the park on some god forsaken rough road. I figure if I walk back towards the park any involved in the search for us will be coming from the park road.
At 7:30, it's finally warm enough to move. I prepare for a ton of pain and slide out of the jeep. It is surprisingly not awful, I keep my back straight and it's really not that bad. If I bend over though, it is the most pain I've ever experienced in my life. I make a note to keep proper posture. It's a long hike back to the park, so first I pull the back seat of my jeep well away from the jeep, dump a can of white fuel I had in my trunk all over it, and light it up. It generates an nice plume of black smoke, but I instantly realize we're so far out in rugged, remote country there's no way anyone can see it.
I pull my buddy's backpack out, it had been wedged back behind his seat and I hadn't been able to pull it out despite many efforts the night before. I open it up, and of course there's a jacket, food, and a nalgene full of clear, pure water. My buddy had been so out of it he didn't even know he had a backpack full of goodies, I thought this revelation hilarious in a weird way. It would have made for a warmer night for my buddy and we wouldn't have had to drink so much downstream-from-a-pasture creek water. I dump out everything, and load the backpack up with my map of the area, some trail mix, and a nalgene of creek water. I leave the nice water for my buddy. He's actually becoming more coherent. I tell him I'm getting help and tell him he needs to stay still. He has me prop his feet up on the dash and I head out.
Now, when the jeep had rolled off the cliff, we landed only about 10 feet from the road, so it was pretty straightforward. I got hiking around 8 A.M. It wasn't actually so bad. Yes I hurt, but I mean, what else could I do? I hike for hours. Around 12:30 P.M I was nearly back to the park boundaries. I start hiking up this hill on the road into the park, when down comes the white pickup of a Law Enforcement ranger.
Seeing that pickup was the best feeling of my life. I was exhausted, turns out I hiked about 7.5 miles through tough terrain (lots of hills, uneven roads, and rocks.). I just threw up an arm and exhaustively waved them down.
The driver in the jeep was a Law Enforcement officer I really respected, a badass mid-30's women who just gave off this air of confidence and competency. Her passenger was the younger 30's head horticulturist, who like 90% of all Park Service employees was Search and Rescue trained. She had a reputation as icy cold and serious. I wouldn't have wanted to be rescued by anyone else.
"Oh there you are" says the driver, almost cheerily, "we figured you had a little breakdown in your jeep!"
"We fell down a cliff, [my buddy] is seriously hurt. He needs help right away. I can lead you there" I reply.
Immediately the two rescuers get serious. They get on the radio and ask for two air ambulances. I tell them I don't need a helicopter. They ignore me. The horticulturalist gets out and gets me a Gatorade. I get in the truck. It's the best drink I've ever had in my life. We get driving down the rough road. It's extremely painful, every jolt is pain, every dip is agony. It's far worse than the long hike out. I explain what happened, the Law Enforcement ranger drives and tells the horticulturalist what to say back to dispatch. It takes us an hour to drive, and once we pass the branch where my buddy the road gets serious. We rip off the front bumper going over boulders. The rangers tell me that they never would have taken this road to look for us, that it's way too rough.
A mile and a half a way, we are forced to stop and continue on foot. We reach the accident. It's around 2 P.M. My buddy has somehow pulled himself out of the jeep, and is now lying on a sandbar with his feet in the stream, on the drivers side!. I am shocked. Our rescuers talk to my buddy. They ask him what happened. He tells them "oh, we got in an accident today, my buddy went to get help! I decided to explore!" He's pretty cheerful for a guy who can't move. Apparently he had decided to leave the jeep, promptly collapsed, and dragged himself to the driver's side. The rangers give my buddy oxygen, and they grab a leftover emergency blanket and set it up so I can lay down in the shade of a bush. I can finally sleep, there's not much left for me at this point.
I nap sporadically, the first helicopter arrives. The paramedics are in shock that we survived the accident when they see the state of my jeep and the size of the cliff we fell down. They have to stabilize my buddy because his pulse is too low to fly out right away, but eventually they get going. I beg the Law Enforcement Officer to drive me out, since I really don't want to pay for an expensive helicopter ride. She tells me the helicopter is already on the way, and besides, don't I want to avoid another painful drive and get to hospital sooner? I decide she right. I'm looking forward to a hospital bed.
The helicopter arrives. A paramedic takes a picture of the jeep because he can't believe I'm able to walk to the helicopter and joke around with the paramedics. They say I'm the best patient ever. I blush. I get in, we get flying. I gotta admit I've always wanted to ride in a helicopter, and I'm excited for the hospital, so I decide this $55K is worth it. The air ambulance crew puts in an IV, and and I mostly sleep but I get some great views, especially of the terrain as it leaving.
I have them take me to same hospital as my buddy. It's kind of cool to get pulled off a helicopter and rolled into the emergency on a stretcher with a full complement of people around. I get X-Rayed. I've broken my back, but just a single vertebrae, the L1. Compression fracture. I get a room upstairs. My buddy is much worse. He's broken five vertebrae, two of them have even split. His brain is also bleeding. He's in Emergency surgery right away, for like 9 hours, they put rods in his back and screw his vertebrae back together.
My big Mormon family (not just my parents and siblings, but my aunts and uncles, cousins, the grandparents too) comes and visits and freaks out, this hospital is only about 20 minutes from my hometown. I tell them this exact story. Once they leave I can't help but cry out of relief. After all that, that hospital bed really was everything I hoped it was that night.
Epilogue: This happened on May 31/June 1 this year. The dialogue is as accurate as I can remember. I would say over 65% of it is verbatim, the rest is a close paraphrase. Most importantly, my buddy recovered. He was in in-patient therapy at the hospital for about a month and using a wheelchair, then went to live with an aunt who was an emergency room nurse and her retired husband who could look after him while he went to physical therapy. He was on crutches for awhile, but was walking around with just a brace by the time he was cleared to go back to work and finish his term four months later. He made it back to the park and was able to work a several more months before his term ended a couple of weeks ago. He will be working at a ski resort in Colorado this winter. My summer internship ended before I was cleared to return to work :/ Either way, other than us being occasionally sore and dealing with medical bills, it's crazy to believe this happened all of 6 months and we are damn lucky to have made it.
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