Clarkston business owner on road to recovery after summer mountain biking crash

On July 6, Brian McKarcher was fixing to finish up a day of mountain biking with his son, Cade, and friend Reny Follett.

The three had been riding down trails at Jug Mountain Ranch near McCall, and there was one last run McKarcher, of Clarkston, wanted to try out. A new trail had been added, and it was just too tempting to pass up.

“I had kind of decided about three or four weeks before that I wasn’t going to do any more black diamonds,” he said, referring to the term for a difficult cycling course. “The last run, I broke my promise to myself that I wasn’t going to do it.”

The men descended the mountain, with McKarcher’s son going first, then Follett, and then McKarcher. But about 20 yards in, McKarcher hit a boulder. He belatedly realized he didn’t have enough speed to clear it, and flipped end over end.

“It was like slow motion,” McKarcher said. “Like I went, ‘Oh, here we go.’”

The flip landed McKarcher on his back, and he hit his head on the rock. McKarcher still has the full-face helmet, which cracked down the center where he landed.

When McKarcher came to, he said, he was lying upside down on a hill, legs above him and head against a boulder. His vision, he said, looked like bright crystal icicles that wouldn’t go away.

“It was all bright white lights,” McKarcher said. “The only way I can explain it is the original ‘Superman’ movie, way back in the day, where he comes into the big crystal palace and there’s crystals all over. Obviously, my brain was whacked.”

For several minutes, McKarcher said, he laid there.

Brian McKarcher’s helmet he wore during his crash on Jug Mountain shows a crack from where he fell. (Credit: August Frank / The Lewiston Tribune)

“I would say I was pretty calm for the situation. I mean, I was concerned. Because I thought, OK, if I can’t move in the next like, 10 minutes? I’m just gonna pass out and die,” he said. “But I wasn’t freaked out.”

McKarcher said he thought about his mother who had died two years before, and thought he might see her.

He assumed his trailmates were too far down to hear him, McKarcher said. But after a few minutes, he decided to try yelling for help.

“I don’t think I was very loud,” he said. “I really didn’t think they’d hear it. And I was thinking, ‘OK, is this my time to go?’”

Despite the distance, McKarcher said, Follett managed to hear his final cry for help. In a GoPro video recorded by his son Cade, McKarcher said he watched the moment when the two went from chatting at the end of the trail to realizing something was wrong.

“They stopped, and then they heard it again and they dropped their bikes. Didn’t even lean them up, they just dropped them and started running up,” McKarcher said.

When the two reached McKarcher, Follett climbed up the hill to call an ambulance. Cade started moving his dad’s arms to help with blood flow.

Because of their location, emergency medical technicians had to get a ride up from the guide driving a Hummer who had been shuttling the group up the mountain to ride down.

With the help of Cade and Follett, EMTs managed to get McKarcher onto a backboard and loaded into the Hummer to get back down the hill, before transferring him to an ambulance. A Life Flight helicopter would bring him to Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise.

There, McKarcher would spend four days in the intensive care unit. When he arrived, McKarcher was paralyzed on his left side from shoulder to toes. Over the next few days, feeling and mobility would slowly begin to return.

McKarcher learned a bone spur in his neck had touched, but not broken, his spinal cord.

If his spinal cord had been broken, McKarcher said, he would have been quadriplegic.

After a few days recovery, McKarcher underwent a cervical laminectomy to prevent further injury. Following the incident, McKarcher said, his friend Ryan Skinner brought him a stationary exercise bike to aid in the recovery.

Now, almost two months later, McKarcher is up and walking, even visiting job sites for his business, Living Waters Lawn and Landscape.

“I’m not grabbing a shovel, I’m super careful,” he said. “”I’ve got a phenomenal staff. I’m really lucky I’ve got people that can take care of things, because I haven’t been down here too much.”

McKarcher said if things continue as they have, he thinks he’ll make a full recovery. He eventually wants to mountain bike and ski again, though his days of black diamonds are behind him.

“My goal is to be able to ski very carefully this winter,” he said. “I think I can do that if it keeps going the way it is.”

McKarcher said he’s going to be careful moving forward — and advises the use of caution and plenty of safety gear. But it’s important to him to keep doing what he loves.

“It might sound crazy, but I’m also an active person, so I feel that I want to keep going,” he said. “I want to grow old and be able to do something.”

McKarcher said he was overwhelmed by support from his friends, family and community.

“I’m very thankful for all the people [who supported me],” he said. “It was overwhelming, just lots of calls, lots of, lots of emails. I’m grateful for all the people who were praying and reaching out.”

Brian McKarcher sits next to one of his bikes. He holds the helmet he was wearing when he crashed his bike on July 6. (Credit: August Frank / The Lewiston Tribune)