Woman Survives 300-Foot Free Fall

A Buhl woman survived a 300-foot plunge into Salmon Falls Creek Canyon when she lost control of her car and slid off the gravel road.

A seat belt saved Marjorie Dennis, 65, according to Twin Falls County Sheriff’s Department reports. Dennis crawled out of her mangled car Thursday and scaled the hill back to the road where she caught a ride back to her daughter’s house in Buhl.

“This woman had a guardian angel looking over her,” said sheriff’s Deputy Paul Bach. “The car was an absolute total. It’s a miracle.”

Dennis was making her daily trip down the grade, taking lunches to elderly people. She tried to go around what she thought was a porcupine in the road. The car slid on the washboard and went off the road backwards, said her daughter, Edith Hurley.

“Everything that was in the car was out of the car. It even ripped the ashtray out of the car,” Hurley said.

Hurley said her mother climbed out the passenger window and clawed her way up the steep drop-off to the road. She has a lump on her head and an inch-long scratch.

“She’s a very tiny woman, but very strong-willed,” Hurley said. “She did say she was saying her prayers on the way down.”

If Dennis had not been wearing her safety belt, she would have been thrown from the car and killed, Bach said.