Members of the Baker County Sheriff's Office's search and rescue ropes team used a system of suspended lines to bring Brandon Garrett to safety after he was hurt in a car crash on June 2, 2024, in eastern Baker County.

Brandon Garrett crashed through the pickup’s windshield and thudded against the stony bank of a mountain stream swollen with icy snowmelt, but his troubles were just beginning.

The pickup which he had so recently and painfully exited, a 1994 Dodge Ram, was still careening down the steep slope, just above where Garrett was sprawled.

All two-plus tons of it crunched to a halt a second, or perhaps two, later.

It missed Garrett.

Barely.

“It was close,” the 60-year-old Halfway man said a dozen days later, on June 14, as he recounted the incident that might well have killed him.

“It landed right next to me.”

Although Garrett had avoided being squashed, his situation was decidedly precarious.

Rain was sluicing down.

A cold rain, more typical of April than of this day, which was Sunday, June 2.

He tried to stand but could not.

He slumped back onto the damp rocks beside North Pine Creek, in the Wallowa Mountains northeast of Halfway.

His friends, the only people who might have reason to wonder what had happened to Garrett, were about 6 miles away.

The road at the top of the embankment he had plunged down was lightly traveled.

Garrett couldn’t see the Wallowa Mountain Loop Road from where he sat, one ankle cracked in three places, a bloody section of his scalp dangling, some part of it perhaps still clinging to the windshield through which he had been propelled. Which meant, he figured, that nobody driving on the road, even if they had occasion to stop and look, would be able to see him.

“I sat there for a couple minutes,” Garrett said. “I was in a lot of pain.”

He knew he had to get clear of the creek to avoid certain hypothermia.

But when he tried to stand again, his legs still wouldn’t support him.

Then he passed out.

A cold, wet night

When Garrett reawakened it was dark. At least a few hours must have passed, he said, since it was around 4 p.m. when he crashed. Garrett said he had worn himself out, cutting firewood.

“I pushed myself too hard,” he said.

While driving his friend Troy Millhollin’s pickup to their camp, Garrett said he dozed off.

“It was just a split second, but that was all it took,” he said.

He realized the truck was careening toward the edge of the road. The spot was near where Forest Road 66, which goes along Duck Creek toward Fish Lake, branches west off the Wallowa Mountain Loop Road.

“I tried to correct it and failed,” Garrett said.

After the truck plunged over the embankment it rolled.

Garrett recalls at least three revolutions but he can hardly be certain.

Three of his four dogs were also thrown clear of the truck before it stopped. One, a 5-year-old female named Little Girl, was still in the pickup. Garrett later found the two other females, Baby and Nova. Both had severe leg injuries but are recovering.

The fourth dog and only male, Blue, a 6-year-old that Garrett describes as a “mutt,” was gone.

What Garrett didn’t know was that Blue was heading upstream along North Pine Creek, toward the camp where Garrett’s friends were. Garrett wasn’t shocked when he learned later that Blue headed for camp.

All his dogs, he said, “are very familiar with that area.”

As far as Garrett knew at the time, though, he was completely on his own.

Although he could move only slowly, he figured his best option, in the black of a cold and rainy mountain night, was to try to get back into the dubious shelter of the truck.

He climbed back through the jagged hole in the windshield.

He spent the night inside staying out of the creek that was flowing through part of the vehicle.

He was surprised, and gratified, to find that Little Girl was OK. He took comfort in her presence, and warmth. He slept occasionally. Mostly he shivered.

Making himself visible

Garrett woke up a little before dawn.

He was shivering more severely than ever.

As soon as it was light enough to illuminate the tangles of vine maples along the creek, Garrett started to crawl downstream toward a place, about 25 yards above the water, where he figured he could see the road.

“Until I was visible, I was in trouble,” he said.

The trip, which covered maybe 100 yards, took at least 90 minutes, he figures.

“It was agonizing,” he said. “My legs were hurt pretty bad.”

Not long after he reached the small clearing, he saw a man above, standing beside the road.

He recognized Baker County Sheriff Travis Ash.

Ash, who had been alerted by Garrett’s friends, initiated a rescue involving the sheriff’s office’s search and rescue ropes team.

Employees from the Forest Service and Pine Valley Rural Fire District used chain saws to cut a path for rescuers to haul a litter to Garrett. The rope team pulled Garrett across the ravine, where he was taken by Halfway Ambulance to a Life Flight helicopter that flew him to Saint Alphonsus Hospital in Boise.

Garrett said Ash’s first words to him were something like “you’re supposed to be dead.”

Garrett, who spent several hours in the hospital before returning to Halfway, heard that part of the story later.

When Blue splashed up North Pine Creek into the camp, Millhollin recognized that something was wrong. He and others started searching.

Garrett said they found the spot where he had gone off the road, sometime after dark. They saw the truck. The terrain was so severe they couldn’t reach it. Garrett said they assumed, not without reason, that he had been killed. But Garrett said his injuries, though painful, were nothing like as bad as they could have been given the circumstances.

His left ankle had three hairline fractures.

And then there was the head wound, which Garrett described as “being partially scalped.”

There were many bruises.

“Other than that I got off remarkably lucky,” he said.

Although he’s still in pain, Garrett said doctors told him he should recover fully.

In the days since the accident, he has been the subject of considerable media attention. He was interviewed for a couple podcasts.

“I feel incredibly fortunate,” he said.

Garrett was born in Baker City on Jan. 13, 1964.

“The first baby born in the county that year,” he said with a chuckle. “My mom kept the newspaper clipping.”

His family was living in Sumpter then. They moved to Halfway in 1967.

“I’ve been here on and off since,” he said.

“I feel incredibly fortunate.”

— Brandon Garrett