James Scully believes he is lucky to be alive after rolling his SUV 250 feet down a mountain side.
Scully had just taken off his seatbelt when he flipped eight times.
“I was thinking is this it for me, but it wasn’t,” said Scully.
Scully was planning to climb a peak outside Aspen the day the crash happened.
He was driving up a narrow path to a campsite, but his SUV for stuck in snow that was still covering half the road.
The other half, was covered in wet loose rocks.
“When the truck started rolling, that was the point when I was like ok here we go,” recalls Scully.
Inside Scully knew each moment could be his last.
“Is this where I’m going to end? Is this where I’m going to die just doing this, because it could be any second that roof could cave in on you. That’s what I was thinking about because I was watching it slowly crushing me inside with every impact to the ground,” said Scully.
Scully believes a couple more flips would have fatally crushed him, but luckily it slid to a stop.
Two guys behind him saw the whole thing.
“They were kind of in shock and awe that I was able to climb out the back the way I did, because they were expecting a dead person in there,” said Scully.
Scully had some cuts on his head, so the witnesses bandaged him up and took him to the hospital where doctors were also in shock he wasn’t critically hurt or killed.
While he's not seriously hurt, he is a changed man.
“The big take away from it is hey why wait to do something. You could be done tomorrow,” said Scully.
He says his Toyota FJ Cruiser is totaled, but he plans to get one just like it because he believes it saved his life.