New Years Eve Search

The Christmas busy period for Search & Rescue continues.

Killaine & I were up in Pemberton for four days - in the meantime, there was a major search for a man missing from the Mt. Seymour ski area for three days.  The chap was found alive the afternoon of New Years Eve.

Killaine & I arrived home later that afternoon.  A few hours later, I received a page indicating that the aforementioned fellow may have seen other tracks in his descent down Suicide Gully, and that we needed to check them out.

Stan, Jimmy & I headed up the Mt. Seymour roadway and snowshoed into the Suicide Creek area.  We hiked up the escape trail a short distance until we met up with the fellow's footprints.  We followed his path for about an hour, back down to the road, but did not find any other footprints.  We had searched through the area that the subject described as having seen the footprints, so we were quite comfortable that there were none others to be found.

We reached our conclusion at around 10:30, and we all managed to make it home for midnight for new years celebrations!

Christmas Rescue

Unfortunately, Killaine & I's Christmas tradition of doing a backcountry ski up Seymour was pre-empted by a rescue for two stranded backcountry skiers in the Mt. Seymour backcountry.

In a nutshell, a couple of backcountry skiers who seemed to be inexperienced with the Mt. Seymour terrain went off for a tour on Christmas Eve.  They ended up lower down on the east side of Mt. Seymour, between De Poncier Lake and Theta Lake.  They had run into very steep terrain and apparently had both been caught in an avalanche, yet were able to extract themselves.  They spent the night out and called (via cell phone) for a rescue Christmas morning.

We were paged at around 11am to respond to our SAR station at Bone Creek.  At that time, the weather was generally clear, although clouds were starting to form on Mt. Seymour.  Our team leader was able to locate the skiers from the helicopter.  Originally, the plan was to do a long line rescue, but the clouds closed in before it we were ready to do the rescue.

So, Plan B was quickly formed - knowing the location of the stranded skiers, a ski team was dispatched from the Mt. Seymour ski area.  They encountered very deep snow, and called for a backup snowshoe team to help flatten out the trail for the climb back out.  Curtis, John, Doug & I were this team.   We took the Mystery Peak chairlift up Mt. Seymour, met up with one of the ski area's snowmobiles, and were transferred to the alpine trail near Brockton Point.  

From there, we made good progress along the alpine trail and then down into De Poncier Lake.  In the meantime, the ski team had made contact with Behnad - another backcountry skier stranded in the deep snow.  The ski team advised us of their contact with Behnad, so when we reached him at De Poncier lake, Curtis took him back up to the alpine trail and back to the ski area.  In the meantime, Fiona & Keith had skied down to us and proceeded onwards to meet up with the first ski team.

The ski team shortly made contact with the original two backcountry skiers - they were in good condition, though a little tired from their ordeal.  They started skiing them out as when kept snowhoeing in - we met up with the team, then the whole 12 person group (10 rescuers & 2 subjects) went back out as a single group.

The group in the darkness at De Poncier Lake

Doug offers me some M&Ms.  Note how well-dressed he is in our new Arcteryx team jacket & pants!

During this period, it was looking increasingly likely that I, plus most of the other rescuers, were going to be missing Christmas dinner.  That was more than a little disappointing for most of us. Fortunately for myself, however, I was back out at the parking lot by about 7:30pm and managed to get over to Hugh's place (Killaine's brother) just as everyone was finishing up Christmas dinner - they saved some for me, so that was great!  Unfortunately for some of the other rescuers, Christmas dinner was fully missed, so that was a shame.

However, it was a beautiful night out in the mountains.  Coming down from the peak of Mt. Seymour, low cloud was over Vancouver, so there was this cool orange glow coming through the clouds - the sky was clear, and it looke very beautiful with the snow blanketed over everything.  

Rescue off Hollyburn

A very successful rescue last night / this morning - a snowshoer fell ~30m down into a steep gully off the west aspect of Hollyburn Mountain - one of his companions was able to climb down to him, but both of them ended up being stuck on a 70 degree slope, hanging on to branches protruding from the snow.

Two members, Al & Jackie, hiked in quickly to the gully, but were unable to access the snowshoers from below.  Myself, Bob, Hannes, Paul & Connie made our way to the top of the gully.  Bob lowered me down into the gully and I made contact with the very cold and very scared couple.  I got harnesses on them, and Bob & team lowered them down the rest of the way to Al & Jackie.  Bob lowered me down, and I hiked out with our subjects.  

Both subjects were fine - the snowshoer who fell in had a few minor scrapes - but both were very cold, but warmed up quickly on the hike out.

A great rescue, and I was very happy to put my rope rescue skills to work.

Some news reports:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/12/16/bc-northshore-cypress-park-snowshow-rescue.html?ref=rss

http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20081216/BC_cypress_snoeshoers_081216/20081216?hub=BritishColumbiaHome

http://www.news1130.com/news/topstory/article.jsp?content=20081216_084705_15556

A photo of Paul, with me in the background:

http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/photos/2008/12/16/bc-081216-snowshoers-saved1.jpg

Winter is Here!

Finally!  Winter arrived on the North Shore!

About 70 or so cm has been dumped on the North Shore mountains - not "tons" by local standards, but enough for Killaine & I to finally get out.

We did the standard short ski up the alpine trail at Mt. Seymour, starting up at around 11:30am or so.  At that time, the trail tends to be busy with backcountry skiers and snowshoers, but everyone seemed quite happy to finally be out in the snow!

My pager went off as we were approaching Brockton Point (at the top) for an injury on the Dog Mountain trail.  So, we ditched our skins and skied down the runs in the ski area.  The ski area wasn't fully opened, so the runs were ungroomed - the skiing was good in the 40cm of new snow, but extreme caution was needed 'cause of the relative shallow depth of the snow, and that the 40cm was pretty much unconsolidated.

Back at the parking lot, I got my radio from my truck, got in touch with my North Shore Rescue colleagues, and quickly jumped into the helicopter for a very short flight into the First Lake on the Dog Mountain trail.

The subject, a 12 year old boy had slipped off a small log bridge with his snowshoes on and had twisted his knee quite badly.  I helped package him in the stretcher and get him back to the helicopter, where he was flown out.  Bruce & I accompanied out the other members of the party.

By the way - the party was a scout group out for a snowshoe as part of learning how to survive in the winter.  They appeared to be very well equipped with extra clothes, thermal blankets, etc.  It's good to see people getting out into the backcountry, and being appropriately prepared for emergencies.

NSR Presentation at West Vancouver Library

I did a presentation on North Shore Rescue at the West Vancouver Memorial Library yesterday .. part of their summer reading club. The audience was mostly kids from 8 to 12 years old and a few parents - about 26 in all.

Education on mountain safety is something that NSR does quite frequently - Curtis, Wally, Connie & Russ really spearhead this program - this was my first presentation - and possibly my first presentation to children at any time!

Beforehand, I trimmed up the standard NSR mountain safety presentation to focus more on stories, and to try to engage the children as to what they think they should do when they go into the mountains, and the types of things they should take.

It went quite well! They had a truckload of questions on all facets of rescue & mountain stuff. Certainly, the interactive engagement worked well, but (for next time), need to remove virtually all text from the presentation - children generally go blank on powerpoint text. :-)

Also ... need to trim the message to it's base elements to get the message across. For younger kids, there's the Hug-A-Tree program that other folks inside NSR have presented - too young for this particular audience.

NSR Task for Lost Skiers at Grouse Mountain

The pager went off at around 6:30pm or so saturday night, and the team was paged out to look for a pair of skiers who had skied out of bounds at Grouse Mountain. The Father & Son team had pitched off the north side of Grouse Mountain to enjoy the couple of feet of fresh snow ... and neglected to think how they were going to climb back up into the resort area. They called 911, and our team was dispatched to find them and get them out.

The avalanche hazard was high that night - a team of about 9 of us went in ... Jeff, Curtis & were held back as an advance backup team while the others found and brought the pair out. While we were waiting, we set up a shelter system, and got some warm drinks going - ready for when the rest of the team brought the pair out an hour and a half or so later.

Jeff, along with the son & father in our shelter.

Although it was a straightforward rescue into an area that we've operated in before, suffice to say that the high avalanche hazard added additional risk to the team. The father & son really should have known better than to ski out of bounds in these conditions.

NSR Avalanche Practice

On December 23rd, I got together with a number of other North Shore Rescue members to practice our Avalanche procedures up on Mount Seymour.

A number of us, including myself, are going to be taking the Canadian Avalanche Association's Avalanche Operations Level 1 course, and thus wanted to bone up on our avalanche transceiver search, Rutschblock, and snow profiling.

Analyzing our snow pit, under the guidance of Fiona.

Fiona doing a hardness profile of the snowpack.

Curtis doing a temperature profile.

Digging out a Rutschblock - yes, we've been getting alot of snow!

New Personal Grouse Grind Patrol Record!

I'm so excited ... I set a new personal record for sweeping the Grouse Grind!

One of the (many) things that we do in North Shore Rescue is to sweep the "Grouse Grind" each night to ensure that there aren't any wayward hikers wandering around in the dark. I sweep it about once a week.

I shot up it in 48 minutes and 35 seconds last night - while still managing to distribute three lightsticks (accompanied with short, but stern lectures on the perils of not carrying a flashlight!), and carrying my (light) 6 1/2 kg pack!

Rope Rescue Course in Squamish

This weekend, I had an opportunity to attend a "Rope Rescue Team Member" course up in Squamish. This course is focused on rope systems to rescue and evacuate injured (or non-injured) subjects from vertical and steep ground. It focuses on accessing the subject from the top (i.e. lowering down to the subject). The rope systems used for this type of rescue are built quite differently from the systems used in rock climbing and mountain rescue - the primary difference is the requirement for a 10:1 safety margin - capable of a vertical raise of a subject & rescuer, or for a slope rescue of up to 6 rescuers carrying a subject in a stretcher.

Along with 5 members of North Shore Rescue (myself, Mike L., John B., Rich & Curtis), there were about 20 other members from other teams (Squamish, Lions Bay, Coquitlam, Ridge Meadows, etc.).

We spent the first day on the individual components of the rescue system. First, anchoring systems. Note the "high strength" anchors - the rope wrapped around the tree, and the "wrap 3, pull 2" webbing anchors - all equalized.

Then, we moved onto stretcher rigging. Here, Bob from North Shore Rescue (and a rope rescue instructor) explains a stretcher rigged for a vertical raise. It's worth noting that everyone tied into one of these systems always has both a belay and load connection.

And, the same stretcher rigged for a slope rescue.

Then, onto belay systems. The picture above shows a standard belay system, using tandem prussiks, and a radium release hitch used to lower the belay under tension if the system locks, or if a knot needs to be passed.

Then, it was on to raise/lower systems - 2:1, 5:1, 7:1, etc. raising systems.

Our instructor for this part - Mark - had a really good way of illustrating the forces created when using a pully to double forces - he used numbered clothes pegs to indicate the amount of force created by each part of the raise system.

The next day, we put the whole thing together in a few scenarios. The first scenario was a slope rescue - bringing a stretcher, subject & rescue team up a steep slope. The intent is that the raise system (and crew) exerts the power to bring the entire team up the slope - the rescuers thus "only" need to hold the stretcher up.

Then, onto a vertical lower/raise system. This picture shows the two edge people assisting the rescuer with the stretcher to get it over the edge.

Large pulleys are frequently used to ensure that the rope goes over the slope above the lip of the cliff, enabling the rescue team to be brought vertically upwards above the lip.

Finally, we also did a "pick-off" scenario, where a rescuer (me, in this case) is lowered down to the subject, clip the subject into the rescue system, and then the subject and rescuer are raised back up.

All in all, a very interesting weekend. Now, to become a full "rope rescue team member" requires another 20 hours of documented practice, followed by a weekend long exam in the spring.

Update on Tukker

You might remember the dog rescue that we did on Golden Ears a while back ... here's an update (and picture) from Kierstie on Tukker's progress:

I thought I'd send you an update on Tukker, since it's been quite some time since we've been in contact. He had his surgery August 22nd which involved a bone graft from his shoulder and a surgical steel plate inserted in his 'wrist' joint! The surgery took just over 2 hours. The reason we had to wait so long for the surgery was because he has an insane pain tolerance and gave no indication that the splint was wearing on his forearm, turns out it rubbed right down to the tendons so they had to repair that first!!! At the peak, he had about 30 stitches in his arm. He only spend a night at the vets and then he was able to come home, which has made the recovery period very interesting!! He has taken a real hate to the cone and when its put on his head he seems to think its a good idea to squeal it along the walls!! He should be completely healed and out of his cast by Thanksgiving!!! Poor guy!!

From The "Weird" Pages ...

We (North Shore Rescue) did a strange helicopter / long-line rescue of a chap who had apparently decided to kill himself by chaining himself to a tree .... then later had second thoughts.

Here's the story extract from the Vancouver Sun:

Hikers thwart bizarre suicide bid

Vancouver Sun

Published: Wednesday, August 01, 2007

A party of hikers searching for a lost dog on the North Shore thwarted a bizarre suicide attempt when they came across a man who tried to kill himself by chaining himself to a tree.

In a written release, the West Vancouver Police Department said the hiking party heard the man calling for help yesterday from his location in a remote forested area of Cypress Bowl Road.

They couldn't reach him but were able to understand his story, the release states.
He told them he had gone to the area six days ago to commit suicide by chaining himself to a tree.

Police and fire department with the help of a helicopter rescued the man who was taken to hospital and is expected to survive.

Yup, that's a curious one alright ...

Why Chihuahuas Are The Most Appropriate Backcountry Dog ...

Yesterday, I learned why a micro-dog like a Chihuahua is a more appropriate dog for the backcountry ... especially when you have to carry one out from the mountains.

This is a picture of me carrying Tukker, a 85 pound Border Collie / Labrador cross with a broken front right leg:

The story ... on Saturday (the 28th), Killaine & I went to hike up the Golden Ears (in Golden Ears Provincial Park). The hike is quite strenuous, with about 1500+ metres of climbing over a 23 or so kilometre round trip. Killaine & I made it to Panorama Ridge and decided to stop there - a combination of poor visibility, Killaine's lingering tiredness from the Queen Charlotte Marathon last weekend, and that I'd been to the summit before.

So, we hung out for a little bit along the ridge, then headed back down.

At around the 8 1/2 km mark, we ran into a couple (Adam & Kierstie ) whose dog (Tukker) had slipped and broken his front right paw - they already had Tukker in the back of Adam's pack, and Kierstie was carrying the bulk of their overnight gear.

Considering that Killaine is virtually a card-carrying member of PETA, and that it was a long, long way back down the trail to carry Tukker, we both pitched in to help Adam & Kierstie .

We split up the gear from Kierstie's pack, and proceeded down the trail, with Adam carrying Tukker in his pack (the trail down, by the way, is steep, rocky & rooted). We lost the trail at one point, necessitating a quick reconnaisance and hike back up to the main trail. I took over carrying Tukker for a couple of kilometres, traded him back to Adam for another couple of kilometres, then a final carry for me down the last bit of steep trail and thankfully onto the long, flat 3 km stretch back to the parking lot - Adam taking over for the last 1 1/2 km.


Tukker was remarkably patient to being carried in a pack for around 6 or 7 hours - although he did squirm a few times, he was generally pleasant (albeit very heavy) to carry. All in all, it was a very long day - about 20km, 1400m of elevation gain & loss and about 11 hours of hiking.

A short YouTube video of me carrying Tukker can be found here.

Hopefully Tukker gets better soon!

(Update: Tukker did have a complicated fracture of his wrist, so he might need some surgery on it)

Quick Search & Rescue on Grouse

Got back a little while ago from a quick search for two missing hikers on Grouse. Left here at about 10:30, drove to Grouse, up the tram with Doug, Connie & Peter, jumped in a truck, and drove partway down the ski runs to where we thought the hikers might be. Sure enough, a few hollars through the loud hailer and we heard their shouts in response. It took another 10 minutes to reach them - they were on a trail paralleling the ski runs - the man and woman (Glen & Maria) were a little cold, but were otherwise fine. A short 15 minute hike took us back up to the top of Grouse, and then a quick ride down and we were done! A record short rescue.