Sean C. Morgan
Scott Kessner spent approximately 14 hours stuck on a mountain hillside after crashing down a snowy embankment east of House Rock last week, but he said he wasn’t particularly worried – despite a broken leg and some other injuries.
“I knew if I could make it through the night (someone would see the truck),” said Kessner, of Oakridge.
He was spotted about noon Wednesday, Feb. 6, by a truck driver, who called for help.
Kessner, 60, fractured his left leg and hurt his right shoulder in the crash.
“I found out I can fly,” Kessner told The New Era last week. “I literally did it.”
He was heading west on the highway, to work, he said.
“I was coming down the hill on Highway 20 about milepost 58.”
Kessner was driving a 1986 Mazda B2000 pickup he had just “cherried out,” he said.
He had been visiting his mother in Redmond, and was headed to Corvallis to sell breakfast at Oregon State University. He operates a mobile food business, Burgers, Etc., and had a load of groceries in his vehicle.
He reached down to change the volume on his stereo and then looked up to see a “12-point buck” in the roadway, Kessner said. He swerved, thinking he would plow into a snowbank. Instead, he went flying through the air for about two seconds.
His pickup landed upright, 70 feet down an embankment a snow-filled creek bed. Kessner said the truck landed between trees to the left, right and front of his truck.
That was approximately at 10:30 p.m. on Feb. 5, said Oregon State Trooper Rich Culley. Medics, rescue workers and police responded to the site of the crash, close to Milepost 59, at about 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 6.
Kessner said he’s 50 percent Blackfoot, with German stock, so he had the good genes he needed for survival. His grandfather also taught him how to survive, and he had groceries, a grill and generator along with him – he quipped he could have stayed there for months.
He also is a “super quad,” who broke his neck 37 years ago and spent two years as a quadriplegic, he said.
He could feel that he had broken his leg, his chest damaged the steering column and his head hit the windshield.
Kessner said he didn’t move for the first three hours after the crash. He kept the doors shut to keep in the heat. He ate some food and drank some water. He didn’t have any signal to his cell phone.
“I wasn’t worried,” Kessner said.
He intended to get out in the morning and attempt to climb the embankment, he said, but when he realized he was more than 10 feet from the road, he realized he couldn’t. He stayed underneath the truck, and planned to gather wood and build a fire.
It took him hours to get into position to exit the vehicle, a 6-foot drop, he said.
“I opened the door, and I kind of fell out. I just let go.”
He grabbed his coat and pushed everything on the floor out of the vehicle. He dropped a floor mat to the ground and fell on that.
“I was kind of comfortable,” Kessner said. “That’s what I always do. I come from good stock.”
He was outside the truck for about three hours when a truck driver spotted him.
The truck driver had spotted Kessner’s truck’s tracks and stopped, Kessner said. The truck driver looked down and yelled. Kessner yelled back, and the truck driver said he was going to get help.
The truck driver contacted an Oregon Department of Transportation snow plow driver further down the highway, Culley said. The ODOT driver went back to the location and located Kessner and his pickup. He notified his dispatcher by radio, and ODOT dispatch called 9-1-1. Medics and rescue responded from Sweet Home.
“They wrapped me up like a burrito,” Kessner said. They made sure he was stable and transported him to Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Corvallis.
“He was transported to a local hospital and in good shape, considering his overnight stay in freezing temperatures,” Culley said.
Kessner said his truck wasn’t totaled in the crash, and it is currently undergoing repairs.
“God was watching over me,” he said, noting that he is writing a book called “Ten Lives.”