Crews from North Shore Rescue have recovered the body of a snowboarder who went missing Friday afternoon while riding out of bounds on Cypress Mountain.
NSR located the man’s body near Montizambert Creek on Saturday morning. Crews long-lined him out to a marina in Howe Sound, where paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene.
Search manager Bruce Moffatt said the area the area where the man’s body was found is a difficult place for search and rescue operations.
“Montizambert Creek is a nasty place to be,” Moffatt said. “It takes hours to move even one kilometre in there.”
The 40-year-old Surrey man went out of bounds at roughly 12:30 p.m. Friday. He was supposed to meet friends a few hours later, but never showed up. He did not have a cell phone with him.
“This gentleman did not have any safety equipment with him and was not familiar with the area which led to the outcome today,” said North Shore Rescue team leader Mike Danks.
NSR search manager Doug Pope told CTV News on Friday night that crews had located a snowboard trail shortly after they began their search, something Moffatt confirmed the following day.
“We were able to get onto his snowboard track fairly quickly,” Moffatt said. “They followed that down into some very steep, cliffy terrain, heading down to a choke-point where there’s a 75-foot waterfall.”
While crews were searching for the missing snowboarder Friday night, they ended up rescuing two skiers who had gone out of bounds that evening.
“They saw the helicopter flying around -- we had Air One helping us search for the out of bounds snowboarder -- and then they called in for help,” Pope said. “Because we had cell phone contact with this group, we were able to get GPS coordinates out of their phone and locate them quite quickly and send a team in to fetch them.”
He said the two skiers made the right decision by staying put and calling for help.
“They know they made a mistake,” he said. “They’ve apologized already, but the best thing they did was call for help early. They hadn’t been lost for very long.”
“I want to express my sincere gratitude” to North Shore rescue, said Colin Simpson, one of the rescued skiers. “They were incredibly professional and turned what could have been an unfortunate situation into us standing here and headed home for the evening.”
With files from CTV Vancouver’s Sarah Macdonald
