DAWSON CITY – On Aug. 17, Louise Pratte finally got to meet and thank the man she credits with saving her life.

She met Holland-America coach driver Jess Mosman by accident at Diamond Tooth Gerties. She recognized him as the face she had seen looking through the window of her semi-submerged car on July 28.

As she spoke to him, he looked at her, recognized her and shouted, “Louise!”

There was a big hug and then the two compared notes on their versions of the events of July 28. Of course, there was a photograph, snapped by her visiting friend, Louise Jarry.

Pratte lived in Dawson for a couple of years, but now lives with her companion, Alfred Berleth, at the Silver Trail Inn outside of Mayo.

She remembers driving to Dawson for a doctor’s appointment that day and hitting a series of frost heave bumps on the Klondike Highway between Stewart Crossing and the Moose Creek Lodge.

“It wasn’t that I was going fast, but I was too fast for those bumps,” Pratte said. “I slowed down too late.”

It was on a corner, and she managed to lock her Toyota’s steering while trying to slow down.

“I think my car jumped … and I went in the other lane and there was a car coming.

“When I saw them I turned my wheels, and got back in my lane, but I turned 180 degrees, fell backwards and landed down in the ravine.”

The car flew over the trees down the 40-foot embankment. It bounced, rolled and landed upside down and backwards in the water-filled slough.

“Because I landed backwards, I didn’t even get hurt by the seatbelt, because the fall pushed me back into the seat,” Pratte said.

“It was perfect. The airbags didn’t even go off – and that was a good thing.”

Disoriented, Pratte didn’t even realize she was upside down.

“My head was not even touching the roof, because I’m small, right?”

But the car quickly began to fill with water through the broken windows, clear at first and then muddy.

“I told myself, ‘This is my last day today, really.’ But I couldn’t accept that. I got my seatbelt off, but by then the water was pitch-black, and I still didn’t realize I was upside down.”

Trying to find a way out, she made her way to the back of her little station wagon and found an air pocket.

Right away, she heard voices outside the car and was flooded with relief that she was not alone; that someone was going to help her.

What had happened was that the car she had missed, which was driven by an elderly gentleman, had flagged down an approaching Holland-America bus and told those aboard what had happened.

Had the coach not been an hour late leaving Dawson on that particular day, Pratte would have succumbed to hypothermia.

As it was, the young man driving, Mosman, took two of the younger passengers down into the ravine, then called out for others among the mostly seniors in the bus to come and help.

Seven men lifted the car and were able to get Pratte out. It all happened in a very short span of time.

“The water was so cold,” Pratte recalled.

“I was just shaking. I heard a guy yelling, ‘Help! More help!’ All my doors were locked but I managed to unlock them.”

The leader outside was yelling for everyone to get a good grip, and then the car lifted, the door opened and the first person she saw was Mosman.

“The first thing he asked me, ‘Are you alone?’ and I said yes. He asked me a second time.

“They kind of pulled me out of the car. I lost my glasses and shoes in the accident. I could see that my legs were so red because the water was so cold.

“Those guys, they were in the water up to here (motioning to above her waist) helping me get out of there.”

Climbing back up the bank through all the branches in her bare feet, shivering from the cold, was another ordeal, but then one of the tourists gave her his shoes to wear and it got easier.

“I had bruises and scratches on my legs, but no head injuries, nothing like that,” Pratte said. “It was like I fell off my bike.”

They wrapped her in a towel and a coat to warm her up, and it was a while before her teeth stopped chattering enough to be able to talk.

People thought she was in shock, but she thinks she was just so cold.

In all the fuss of people around her asking if she was OK, she lost track of the driver.

Fortunately a smaller bus came along heading to Dawson and she rode on it to Moose Creek, where the operators looked after her.

The Holland-America coach had to move on as soon as possible as it was already late, even though all the passengers wanted to follow her and make sure she was all right.

She phoned her boyfriend, the police and the insurance company, and even called the hospital in Dawson to let staff know she wouldn’t be able to keep her appointment.

She and Berleth had returned to the Silver Trail Inn when the tow truck arrived for the two-hour extraction operation, but Moose Creek’s Wayne Fraughton recovered as many items as he could from the car, including her glasses and her purse, and took it to Mayo for her.

“For sure I was very stiff the next day and for two days after. It was like I had done a marathon. And I could hear my pulse pounding in my ear for many days after,” Pratte said.

Three days later, she and Berleth went back to the ravine with a rake and, while the water was clear, managed to recover more of her possessions, including her wallet.

They also visited Dawson and searched the wrecked car to see what else they could find.

“I found pretty much everything I wanted to get, but my camera and binoculars were ruined,” Pratte said.

A week later, she kept her doctor’s appointment in Dawson, driving herself in their other vehicle, a van.

“For sure I’m more nervous now, and when I see even a tiny ditch with water, I don’t like to see that,” Pratte said.

She and Mosman made numerous attempts to contact each other over the next several weeks, but their conflicting schedules made it hard to arrange.

“I really wanted to talk to him because I couldn’t talk to anyone who had been in that ditch with me and I had so many questions,” she said.

“Friday night, I was with my friend, who is visiting the Yukon for the first time. We were both at the casino.

“I looked at her, and I’m, ‘Look at this guy over there. He looks so much like the bus driver.’ She said, ‘That’s not possible. He’s way too young.’

“I just couldn’t keep my eyes off of him. (I decided) I have to take a risk. So then I go to him and say, ‘Excuse me, but you remind me of someone. Do you drive a bus?’

“He backed up and he looked at me all the way and he’s like, ‘Louise!’

“Then we chatted and he told me his story. He’s 25 years old, and this is his fourth summer here doing tours. Hearing his story, everyone is so impressed by the way he acted at the accident.”

When the other elderly driver stopped the bus, Mosman, from his height in the coach, was able to see Pratte’s vehicle in the water.

He told her that he had been so scared that day because he didn’t know if he was going to find a live or a dead person in that car.

Had the bus left at 8:00 as usual, he and his passengers would not have been able to save her.