“I guess it wasn’t my time.”

Roger Latondress still can’t believe he is alive.

On Monday evening, his car careened into the Yukon River at the Lewes Bridge near Marsh Lake, south of Whitehorse.

The Watson Lake resident had been grocery shopping in Whitehorse and was on his way home when the accident happened shortly before 7:30 p.m.

Drifting snow made for poor visibility that night.

“There were a couple people in a hurry; they passed (me) and left the road a whiteout,” Latondress recalled in an interview today in Whitehorse.

He was driving at 70 km/h because of the poor conditions, he said.

The posted speed limit on that section of the road is 90 km/h.

As he approached the bridge, Latondress became confused by which way the road was and a stop sign to the right of the Alaska Highway.

“I decided, ‘OK, the road goes right,’” he said.

Going south on the Alaska Highway, there is a dirt road veering right before the bridge.

Latondress mistook the exit ramp for the highway.

Very quickly, he realized he had made a mistake, but it was too late.

He was faced with diving into the Yukon River or crashing head-on into the bridge.

The next thing he knew, his car was airborne.

“My heart was coming up my throat,” said Latondress, describing the moment when his car left the road, flying in the air.

“This is it,” he thought to himself.

The car crashed into the river in a loud bang, then everything went quiet.

Latondress couldn’t see much as the impact blew the hood into the windshield.

All of a sudden, the Mazda started moving sideways – silently.

That’s when he realized he was in the water.

He first went for the door. Then, realizing opening it would sink the car, he opted to roll down his window.

As he got himself out through the window, his car started to sink.

“I went one way and the car went down,” Latondress told the Star.

“This is the only ticket out of here, boy,” he told himself, seeing the shore about 10 metres out.

He managed to swim to shore in the ice-cold water of the Yukon River.

“The other thing is that I don’t really know how to swim, but I did it somehow,” he said.

On top of that, the 64-year-old man suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, a painful chronic condition causing joint inflammation.

“That kicks in whenever it feels like doing so,” he said.

“Lucky for me, I had my strength that day.”

Once on the shore, a truck driver and his partner who had following him helped Latondress climb in the truck’s cab.

“They told me to undress, got the heat going, gave me a heavy coat,” he said.

The highway can be quite lonely at night, he noted, and without the truck drivers, he believes he would have died.

“Boy, if they weren’t there, I would not have been there,” he said.

“I would have froze to death before somebody would have come along.”

Shortly after he was helped out by the truck drivers, an ambulance arrived and medical staff wrapped him in a warming blanket, with heat bags on his arms and legs.

Only afterward did Latondress realize he had managed to keep his hair dry.

“I must have given it all,” he said, laughing nervously.

Once he was at Whitehorse General Hospital, the reality finally started to sink in.

Two days after the near-fatal accident, Latondress is still struggling with its aftermath.

“When you hear stories like that, you can sympathize with the person, but you can never really understand the impact it has on a person's life,” he said.

“Even right now, it’s still quite emotional that I made it,” he said, tearing up.

He couldn’t get any sleep on Tuesday night, as nightmares of the crash kept coming back to him.

“It’s amazing how close you can come to death sometimes,” he said, reflecting back on the miraculous survival.

Now Latondress is working with friends to co-ordinate getting the car out of the water.

He is also looking to find a way to make up for the $2,500 worth of groceries, appliances and Christmas gifts he has lost, and the cost of recovering the car.

Some of his friends have set up an online fundraising campaign, available at gofundme.com/helprogertoday