An 11-year-old girl survived a car crash that killed two adults on Red Mountain Pass on Tuesday morning, after the vehicle she was riding in tumbled down a 320-foot cliff and landed on its roof in Red Mountain Creek.

Louis Michael, 42, and Leoba Valdez, 79, both of Aztec, New Mexico, died after the Honda Civic crashed, according to Ouray County Coroner Glenn Boyd.

Eyewitnesses to the accident told investigators they saw the vehicle backing up in the lane headed south before it went off the side of the road and plunged down the mountain. There are no guardrails on the edge of the highway.

The accident happened near mile marker 88 around 7:25 a.m. Tuesday, according to the Colorado State Patrol. It’s unclear at this time why the car was traveling in reverse, and the accident is still under investigation.

Ouray Mountain Rescue Team volunteers were able to rappel down the cliff and rescue the girl before the bodies were recovered from the vehicle.

The accident happened on a stretch of the Million Dollar Highway climbers know as “the waterfall,” according to Ouray Mountain Rescue Team spokesman Tim Pasek.

The volunteer rescuers were able to use a rope suspension system to transport the girl and recover the bodies from the crash site. This is the first time in its 51-year history the rescue team has used a “highline,” which involved a set of ropes transported across the canyon from just below the highway where the car went off the road to the opposite side of the cliff.

Rescuers rigged these ropes using a team of rock climbers and rescue technicians, shuttling the rope across the canyon.

“They had to do a short climb up to a ledge and rappel down to another spot where they used a tree on the cliff side, opposite the highway, to secure the line,” Pasek said.

Meanwhile, volunteers used extrication tools to remove the doors on the vehicle to free the girl from the wreck and get her out of the canyon so she could receive medical treatment. She was airlifted to Children’s Hospital in Aurora, according to Ouray County Sheriff Justin Perry.

Emergency personnel closed the highway so they could handle the rescue operations safely and later recovered the vehicle.

Pasek said there were a few factors that helped the girl survive. The car landed upside down in the creek, but the water was low. That helped mitigate the risk of drowning for the girl trapped in the vehicle.

The fact that a witness saw the car backing up before it disappeared from the roadway and decided to call 911 was also fortuitous, Pasek said.

“Unless you were to walk out past the white line (on the side of the road) and look over the edge, you wouldn’t see any of that,” he said. “They got lucky it was seen. Who knows how long that kid would have been down there, it’s so hidden from view.”

It took hours for the vehicle to be recovered from the bottom of the cliff, and Colorado State Patrol troopers were on scene until 2:32 a.m. Wednesday, according to Sgt. Jeremy Brailsford.

First responders also handled two, separate head-on collisions that happened five days apart in the same stretch of highway near Billy Creek State Wildlife Area. The stretch of road is narrow and has a no-passing zone.

The first accident happened on the evening of Aug. 1 at mile marker 114, south of Colona, when a driver of a white Nissan Titan truck crossed over into the oncoming lane and struck a white Ford F-150 pickup pulling a camper trailer, according to the State Patrol. The force of the accident caused the Ford truck to roll, and it later caught fire after the occupants were able to get out. The truck and trailer were destroyed.

According to Trooper Hunter Mathews, 29-year-old Austin Hearne of Telluride was issued a citation for alleged careless driving causing bodily injury.

Family members of the victims in the accident, Amos and Marcie Jaramillo, have posted requests for donations online to help pay for reconstructive surgery and personal belongings lost in the fire, which consumed the truck and trailer. Two juveniles were also in the accident.

Anyone who would like to contribute donations to help them can contact Heather Jaramillo at 970-712-4312.

The second head-on accident happened Wednesday around 9 a.m. near the previous accident scene, where the burn scar from the crash and the fire remained from last week.

“This is getting pretty dangerous. It’s about 100 yards from the last accident we had,” Perry said.

Perry called for a review of the highway stretch near Billy Creek State Wildlife Area and an open discussion about safety concerns, adding there might be options for making the roadway safer.

“I don’t know if it’s a matter of widening the road or slowing the traffic down,” he said.

“But it definitely warrants an open discussion, talking with State Patrol and (the Colorado Department of Transportation) to see if there’s something that could be done.”

Perry said the other element to consider is the behavior of drivers themselves.

“We’re seeing a lot of impatience, we’re seeing people trying to pass when they shouldn’t,” he said, adding the traffic congestion during tourist season is also a concern. Wednesday morning’s accident killed 40-year-old Tyler Smith of Montrose, who was the driver of the Dodge Grand Caravan, according to Boyd. The details of the accident were not available as of deadline Wednesday afternoon.

Initial investigation from the Colorado State Patrol indicates the deceased driver of the van was determined to be at fault in the accident, in which the van hit a Dodge Ram 1500 truck head-on. The passenger in the van was in critical condition as of Wednesday morning. The two occupants of the truck were not injured, according to the State Patrol.