A man from Denver walked away with a few scrapes and bruises – after rolling his modified Toyota FJ Cruiser 250 feet down the side of a switchback mountain.
31-year-old James Scully, was driving up Montezuma Basin on Forest Road Saturday. Scully was on his way to the Castle Peak and Conundrum Peak trailhead outside of Aspen. He was looking for a high campground to shorten his climb the following day.
Scully said the roads started getting more difficult the further he drove up the mountain, but nothing concerned him too much. He was maneuvering through the switchbacks until he found a snowbank blocking the road.
“That’s when everything started to happen. That’s when I knew I was in trouble," Scully said.
Scully drove over the snow bank, hoping to avoid the shoulder of the road.
“I’m driving through it fine for about ten yards and then all of a sudden … it starts to push the vehicle toward the shoulder part, which was really soft and unstable," Scully said.
Soon after, the ground gave way, causing Scully's FJ Cruiser to hang off a ledge. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt when the SUV was rolling down the hill.
“It happened so fast, it’s really hard to remember what was going through my head, but I remember seeing the hood. I was holding onto the steering wheel and just going along with it, just tumbling,” Scully said.
Scully believed the SUV rolled over about seven times before coming to a stop on the passenger side. He was in shock when the SUV came to a stand-still.
“It stopped ... I’m still alive. That’s what was going on in my mind. The second thing was, I need to get out of this thing because it could possibly blow up,” Scully said.
He was able to get out of the SUV by himself out the back window.
Two other off-roaders witnessed the crash – and were able to run down to where his car stopped rolling. They drove him to Aspen Valley Medical Center because he didn't need serious medical attention.
Scully is a little sore and has a couple of cuts on the top of his head, and a few bumps and bruises. He said, no one who saw him now would know that he had recently fallen down a 250-foot cliff.
He hopes this story resonates with others who may be off-roading.
“It’s a learning experience and I’m just hoping that other people can learn from this and not do what I did – maybe it saved somebody's life."
