A plane crashed into the mountains south of Clover Valley in Elko County on Sunday, May 17.Â
The pilot, who was the only occupant, was rescued with minor injuries.
Volunteer firefighter and rancher Jordan Brough was in church when he received an iPhone alert about a nearby plane crash.
"After I got the alert, I told some buddies that i was sitting by at church," Brough said. "I said, 'hey, you guys want to go look for an airplane crash?' And they're like, yeah, let's go."
After that, it was a race to get home, get changed, and get on their way.
"We ran home. I lent the one buddy who doesn't live there, I lent him some clothes of mine," Brough continued. "We hopped in my other buddy's, who's my next-door neighbor, we hopped in his side-by-side and took off up the mountain to go try to find him."
The journey started around 11:30 Sunday morning.
Braden Whitaker was one of the ranchers who tagged along with Brough. At first, he thought the journey would take a lot longer, but the crash turned out to be in a convenient spot.
"We thought it was in another valley over from where we are," Whitaker recalled, "and when we got home, we punched in the coordinates, and it was actually right behind my house."
Three hours later, the band of brothers had found nothing, and were about to give up and turn around.
"It was pretty snowy and windy out there, so we couldn't really see, and we hadn't heard anything from the pilot," Whitaker said. "We'd been hollering. We knew we were pretty close, close enough that he should be able to hear us."
Whitaker continued, "we decided just to holler one more time. I was up ahead a little bit, so I heard him pretty clear. And so, I told those guys like, I hear him so let's keep going."
Brough was born and raised in Clover Valley and knows the area very well.
Once they found the plane, it was about 4:30, and they realized they were the only ones on scene.
Time was of the essence, and thankfully they found the pilot in good condition.
Brough said the pilot had "minor scrapes and bruises and he complained about his chest hurting, which, when you run into a mountain, I'm sure that would probably be the least of your worries."
Brough and his friends took the pilot back down the slope and onto a helicopter, which took him to an ambulance to get to the hospital.
Whitaker says the pilot told him he went to Colorado for his son's graduation, then started the flight home to Oakland when he ran into bad weather.
"He tried to land in wells, but it was pretty bad and said he missed the runway," Whitaker recalled, "and so he said he started heading for Elko, I assume because he thought it would be better over there. I think a lot of people just don't realize how tall the mountains behind our house are. And so, there's a lot of people that crash into them."
It took until about 6:45 for everyone to be off the mountain.
Brough says he's grateful to everyone who helped out, especially the helicopter pilot.
"He was able to come get the guy we rescued and come get us, the rescuers," he said. "It sure would have been a really, really cold walk off that mountain if we'd had to do it on our own."
For Whitaker, the experience was proof of a higher power.
"It shouldn't have worked the way it did, and it just worked out good," he said. "So it doesn't matter what religion you are, but if you don't believe in God, for me, that was definitely a testimony that someone bigger than us is up there."
Thanks to the quick work of Brough, Whitaker, and their friends including Jordan Taylor, the pilot is now well on his way to recovery.
The ranchers worked quickly to rescue the pilot from the wreckage.
