PINCHER CREEK, Alta. — Her mother unconscious and bleeding after their car tumbled down a steep embankment, Mary Butler climbed 40 metres back up the snowy slope looking for help.

The five-year-old girl is being hailed as a hero for making the treacherous climb -- through the broken window of the car that had flipped over a guardrail and tumbled down onto a barbed wire fence -- before flagging down a passing truck for help.

“She is a very brave little girl,” says Crowsnest Pass’s emergency medical technician Amy Harris, who arrived on the scene shortly after receiving a call for help.

On Oct. 13, Mary and her mom Nikki left their Lundbreck home and were travelling along Hwy. 3, about 200 kilometres southwest of Calgary, when they hit black ice and crashed down the embankment.

The car was so far down the ravine that passing motorists would have been unable to see it and the scene likely would have stayed undetected for hours had Mary not gone looking for help, officials said.

Mary called out to her unconscious mother but, when she got no answer, decided to try to find help herself.

Rescuers had to cut open the roof of the truck to save her severely-injured mother. Nikki, who remembers nothing of the crash, suffered a broken arm, a deep slash along the length of her forehead and a number of other marks, but nothing life-threatening.

She was brought from Pincher Creek to Foothills hospital in Calgary.

Mary, on the other hand, walked away with a set of small bruises along her hips, caused by the seatbelt.

“Mary showed great spirit, it didn’t faze her at all,” Nikki’s boyfriend, James Graydon, said of the crash.

“Once they did her x-rays at the hospital, she was bouncing around like a normal five-year-old.”

The girl’s parents still wonder how she knew what to do, but Mary simply says “just because.”

“It’s not something I taught my kid, though, I guess I should have,” Nikki said.

“My only assumption is that someone was helping us.”

Had Mary sat in her regular seat, by the window, she may not have been able to make the climb, though.

Fortunately for the pair, she chose the central seat usually occupied by her stepbrother and wound up unharmed. The other two booster seats flew around the car as it crashed down the embankment.

Last week, Mary’s aunt nominated the girl for a bravery award.

Now, the family just hopes to find and thank the driver of a Volker Stevin sanding truck, who spotted Mary frantically waving her hands at passing cars on the highway.