Once Louise Pratte’s car flew off the North Klondike Highway and over the trees, it rolled a couple of times and landed, upside down, in the ditch.

Water pooled in the ditch poured in right away through the smashed windows.

She was submerged.

“I really thought at that point that it was my last day,” the 46-year-old Mayo resident said Friday over the phone from the community’s RCMP detachment.

“All the dirt came up, so it was so dirty I couldn’t see anything,” she told the Star.

“It was pitch-black. That I remember, trying to open my eyes, and it was pitch-black. At that point, I was completely disoriented because I didn’t realize I was upside down.”

She’d been on her way to a doctor’s appointment in Dawson City last week.

It was a sunny Monday morning and visibility was good, but Pratte said she didn’t slow down enough over the bumpy road and her car, popped up in the air.

She lost control and veered into the other lane. Another vehicle was oncoming, so she wrenched her wheel the other way, her foot on the brake, and her wheels locked. That’s when she left the road.

Pratte remained conscious the whole time, she said.

She landed in the ditch, undid her seatbelt and tried to feel her way around the vehicle. Her belongings were floating around in the water.

She managed to find a section of the car where she could stick her head out of the water and breathe. That’s when she heard voices.

“What a relief it was, because I was like, ‘I am not alone,’” she said.

“So I knew there were people out there but I couldn’t see anything because I was upside down, and all the windows were below me.”

Pratte noticed she was right beside a door, the back seat on the passenger’s side. She tried to open it, but it was blocked by trees and branches.

Then she heard a man’s voice: “Just wait two seconds!”

Pratte felt the car move, and was then able to open the door.

Seven men, tourists in their 50s or 60s and the driver of a Holland America tour bus, had waded into the waist-high water and lifted the vehicle.

They helped her out of the car.

One of the men gave Pratte, who was now barefoot, his running shoes to wear as they climbed up the nine- to 12-metre-high embankment over broken glass and brush.

She was soaking wet and so cold she could barely talk.

A second, smaller tour bus had stopped and its passengers wrapped her in a towel, blanket and sleeping bag.

The owner of the Moose Creek Lodge, about one kilometre down the road from the accident, was on the scene. He drove Pratte back to the lodge, where she called the RCMP and her boyfriend.

She’s since learned that the driver of the car she nearly veered into flagged down the Holland America bus after he saw Pratte go off the road.

Days later, she went back to the accident site with friends. Wearing gloves and wielding garden rakes, they combed through the water and found her wallet.

She’s been up to see the vehicle in Dawson City, where it was towed to.

It’s “completely wrecked,” she said.

Pratte has some neck and ear pain. Her legs are bruised and her muscles are stiff, but other than that, she’s fine.

“It’s quite incredible,” she said. “If it had happened differently, I could have died there.”

She expressed her gratitude to the tourists, the owner of the lodge and the other driver who first flagged the bus down.