I accidentally did a push --force on the wrong repo (too many termminals open), effectively resetting the master branch back to an earlier commit.
Looking a
You can create a branch from an orphaned commit in the Github GUI by doing the following:
Now that you have a branch, you can use your Git client to check it out as normal.
This post was helpful as I researched this. It basically states that you are stuck unless you have a local repository containing the orphaned commits. My approach allows you to add a branch so the commit is no longer orphaned.