After nine and a half hours of crawling, and still miles to go, Jake Schmitt was certain he would lose his leg.
As a guide and decades-long hunter in the area, Schmitt’s last trip to the woods — the area surrounding the Whitney Reservoir in the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest — was nothing new.
Schmitt set out on Sunday, July 20, for a tour with Buddy, his dog and close hunting companion. He couldn’t have known that the day would leave him broken and bruised, surviving on willpower, wilderness knowledge and the unwavering loyalty of his dog.
Originally from Buffalo, New York, Schmitt made extended trips out to the West, spending entire seasons chasing elk, deer, and big game. He moved to Ogden permanently three and a half years ago.
“I worked all over the place, from Saskatchewan to Montana and Ontario. But I liked it the most in Utah when I was hunting and guiding there. So I decided to move out here, and everything just lined up for me here, and I could do everything I wanted in one place, and it was a meant-to-be kind of thing,” said Schmitt.
Schmitt and Buddy have logged countless days in the backcountry together. Buddy rides in a kennel in the back of Schmitt’s side-by-side, zippered in to keep him secure while driving.
That Sunday, everything was going well, Schmitt said. He and Buddy covered the miles around the Whitney Reservoir spotting game, and, by late afternoon, had located a buck Schmitt was eager to watch with their last hour of light. It was approaching nightfall when Schmitt maneuvered the four-door side-by-side along a network of rough trails, looking for a safe approach to the animal’s position high on a ridge.
The crash
Schmitt was reversing down an overgrown trail, hoping to park his rig and walk the rest of the way, when the trail gave way.
“Inches from being just flat and parked, somehow my back rear tire started sinking and falling off the trail,” Schmitt said.
He suspects a severe thunderstorm two days earlier had softened the ground, hidden beneath high grass. The shift happened in “almost slow motion,” he said. As the back right tire dropped, the front left began to lift.
“It’s almost like it’s sinking into mud,” he said. “At this point, it’s so steep. I know it’s going to crash.”
Schmitt tried to escape through the window before it started to roll down the steep grade to the creekbed below.
“I was halfway out when the machine just started to roll so bad it took me with it,” he said.
The side-by-side rolled over him once or twice before a violent jolt launched him through the windshield and onto the steep slope. The machine kept tumbling almost 150 feet down, by Schmitt’s estimate, until it reached the creek below.
The crash left Schmitt with both ankles fractured, a broken tibia and fibula, multiple broken ribs, dislocated joints and a body covered in cuts and bruises. The rig, carrying all of his safety equipment, phone and radio, had plummeted down the slope, leaving him with no choice but to find a way down to it.
“I tried to stand up on my right leg. I knew something was wrong, thinking it was probably broken or something, but it was usable. And then on my left side, I just couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t use it,” said Schmitt.
The steep incline blocked his view of the damage to his left leg, where his lower leg had broken in half. As he lifted the leg to find the problem, panic set in. And that’s when Buddy arrived at Schmitt’s side.
“He was in a kennel in the rear of the machine, zippered and strapped in. He’s supposed to be able to go nowhere,” said Schmitt. “It blew me away. He just came up to me, wagging his tail like everything was fine. That gave me the energy I needed and pulled me out of my panic enough to assess the situation.”
The crawl
Though Buddy had returned to Schmitt’s side unharmed, the problem of their survival remained. With no choice but to try and recover his equipment and call for help, but without the ability to use his legs, Schmitt decided to let gravity roll him down the slope.
“It was just so steep, and the leg was so badly broken. I had to essentially grab my leg with both hands and fall down the mountain,” he said.
But when Schmitt made it to the side-by-side, all that remained in front of him was the two backseats and the motor, still running.
“Everything was just scattered everywhere. The roof was ripped off. There were no wheels, there was no glass and the doors all looked absolutely mangled. It was so bad,” said Schmitt.
With no sign of his radio, phone or emergency kit, all Schmitt had was himself, his dog and a roll of duct tape. They began the long haul to safety, hoping to reach a trail and get help. Schmitt set and splinted his left leg with duct tape and his belt and began to drag himself backward through the brush.
Night had set in when Schmitt realized the dog’s collar had a small LED beacon light. He turned the light on, following Buddy’s lead as the dog navigated the heavy brush and trees of the Uintas until he found a familiar trail.
Switching to a crawl, Schmitt dragged his broken limbs to meet Buddy every few feet as the dog ran ahead and paused for the hunter to reach him, guided by the light on his collar. The pair crossed six creeks, stopping to drink at each one, dropping over 1,600 feet in elevation and covering five miles in a crawl to reach his truck at the trailhead.
Then came the concern for wildlife. Tracked by coyotes, Schmitt began to holler and shout to scare away any other lurking beasts as he fought his way to safety.
He crawled for hours. Two or three, he estimated. At the fifth creek crossing, Schmitt finally saw a glimmer of hope — a beam of light cutting through the darkness, flashing toward him through a break in the trees.
The sunrise
“I thought it was a big truck with a huge light bar on it, that someone had figured out that I was out here way later than I should be. Maybe it’s one of my friends,” said Schmitt. “I’m so excited to get rescued and I’m thinking about trying to not get run over by the car, when I realized that it was the sun peeking through this little pocket of trees and the horizon.”
It hadn’t been just two or three hours — it had been nine and a half. The real threat to his survival was no longer the coyotes he’d heard in the dark but the creeping hopelessness that had begun to set in.
“I’m all turned around, I didn’t realize that this was way, way, way longer than I thought, and not only is it not someone coming to get me, but it’s been a very long time,” said Schmitt, now certain he would lose his leg and fighting to move faster down the mountain.
As Schmitt continued his crawl, often collapsing under his weight, Buddy’s snout continued to nudge him back up and shepherd him out of the woods. When Schmitt finally reached his truck, it had been 11 hours since the crash. He bumped the trailer off his hitch and dragged himself along the ground to reach for the door handles, forcing his body into the driver seat, where he drove almost 30 minutes to the closest town.
The recovery
Schmitt made it to the Oakley Diner at 8:30 a.m. on July 21, where a waitress called for paramedics and Schmitt was brought to the Park City Hospital. Schmitt’s leg was saved with a rod and some stitches, and he spent a week recovering in the facility before returning home to Ogden. Schmitt says this experience hasn’t changed his relationship to hunting or the outdoors.
“I definitely want to get back out there. The reality of it is, this is a humongous setback, and it sucks, but I’m not scared to get out again. I’m actually kind of excited and annoyed that I can’t just yet. It’s frustrating, healing like an old man in my walker for a while,” he joked.
With his side-by-side destroyed and no way to work in either his guiding or welding businesses, the uninsured survivor now faces mounting worries over his career and looming medical bills.
“If you do everything alone, you still have to be able to figure out how to self-rescue. Even though we live in a world of all these gadgets, it’s like I had every gadget you could want, and it still didn’t matter at the end of the day. So, regardless of how bad this has affected my life, I am happy to be alive,” said Schmitt.
Schmitt’s family and friends organized a GoFundMe page to help with his recovery and medical expenses, which can be found at tinyurl.com/44uhadsd.