MAN’S BEST FRIEND

Hunter in Terrifying Cliff Plunge Crawls for 11 Hours With Broken Bones to Save Himself

Jake Schmitt and his dog Buddy crawled their way to freedom after a car crash left them trapped on a mountain.

A man trapped on a mountain after his vehicle fell off a cliff crawled for 11 hours to drag himself to safety, with his loyal dog by his side the entire time. Jacob ‘Jake’ Schmitt was driving through Utah’s Uinta Mountains with his dog Buddy after hunting deer when his vehicle lost control and flipped “probably 15-20 times,” sending him tumbling down the mountain and breaking his leg, ankles and ribs in the process. “Losing his phone, and with no light except for the one on Buddy’s collar, Jake did something extraordinary: he splinted his leg and crawled for miles down the mountain for over 11 hours through the night, until he reached his truck, where he drove himself to The Oakley Diner, where staff called 911,” Schmitt’s friend wrote in a GoFundMe raising funds for his medical bills. “Everybody wants to act tough, but I wanted to give up every time, all the time—but it’s like, either I die here, or I figure out how to keep going,” Schmitt later told KSL-TV, and credited his loyal dog Buddy for giving him the willpower to keep going. “I couldn’t have done it without him,” he added. “It was like having your best friend there just to kind of nudge you like, ‘Keep going, keep going,’ you know.”