VANCOUVER -- A group of hikers that included multiple children has been found after being reported missing in Cypress Provincial Park on Metro Vancouver's North Shore.
In a Facebook post Monday, North Shore Rescue said five hikers, including three children, were missing.
In its post, North Shore Rescue asked hikers who were in the Whyte Lake, Baden Powell, Eagleridge Bluffs, Black Mountain, Cabin Lake and Bowen Lookout areas Sunday to contact police if they had seen the group.
Less than an hour after posting their message online, North Shore Rescue said the group had been found.
"They spent a cold night on Cypress and found their way out this morning while search crews were looking for them," the post says.
The call to find the group was one of many North Shore Rescue received over the weekend. On Saturday alone, the organization responded to four calls for help, one of which included a serious back injury when a hiker slipped and fell into a tree well.
Crews also received a call for an apparent avalanche with four people hit, and one with a broken leg. But when they got to the mountain crews discovered there hadn’t actually been an avalanche.
“We eventually figured out that yes there was a snow slide, a bit of snow came down and one person got pushed into a tree and twisted their ankle," search manager Peter Haigh told CTV News Vancouver.
North Shore Rescue says its most common calls are for twisted ankles, which can often be prevented by wearing hiking boots with proper ankle support.
The organization is currently on track for another record-breaking year of rescue calls.
“In British Columbia every year on average there’s about 1,700 search and rescue calls, last year we had just over 2,000 search and rescue calls,” Sandra Riches, the executive director of BC AdventureSmart, told CTV News Vancouver over the weekend.
“We need to be responsible hikers.”
With files from CTV News Vancouver's Allison Hurst
