North Shore Rescue kept busy Saturday night with 4 calls

A search and rescue volunteer is pictured hoisting a man with a broken leg into a helicopter above Cypress Mountain on Saturday, July 13. (North Shore Rescue/Facebook)

Volunteers with North Shore Rescue were kept busy Saturday, responding to four calls for help and working into the early hours of Sunday morning.

Search manager Dave Barnett told CTV News the first call came in at 6:15 p.m. for a hiker with a sprained ankle on Cypress Mountain. He said the trails in the area are quite “rooty” and slippery right now, so it’s easy to end up twisting your ankle.

A ground crew hiked up to the 22-year-old and splinted his ankle, but it was too painful to walk on so he was eventually picked up by a Talon helicopter.

It took some time for the Cypress hiker to get taken off the mountain, however, because another call came in at 7:30 p.m. for a camper with a broken leg on Mount Seymour, so crews had to pivot.

With a doctor on board, NSR flew the helicopter to the First Peak area. The 24-year-old was given pain medication, put in a special evacuation stretcher and hoisted up into the helicopter. The man was then flown to Inter River Park where he was transferred to paramedics.

The Seymour rescue wrapped up at about 11:25 p.m., Barnett said, but by that point NSR was dealing with three calls at once, because Pemberton Search and Rescue requested assistance from them around 9 p.m.

That call was for a diabetic mountain biker whose blood sugar levels were crashing in South Chilcotin, a remote area about 95 kilometres north of Pemberton.

“Fortunately the mountain bikers had satellite communication, because there’s certainly no cell service there,” Barnett said, adding that without being able to alert rescuers there’s “no telling what the outcome for that patient would be.”

Once the Seymour and Cypress evacuations were complete, the crew flew the helicopter north, loaded the biker in, and flew down to Pemberton where he was handed over to the local SAR team.

“We were flying at night, and fortunately, we had Talon and their night-equipped helicopter or we wouldn't be going to Pemberton,” he said.

As NSR was wrapping up that call, the final one of the night, another request for assistance, came in from Lions Bay Search and Rescue.

It was the day’s most complex mission, to extract two climbers who got stuck in a “very technical” spot on the Lions.

“They were anchored into the rock area that they were climbing, but unable to proceed up or down,” Barnett said.

The climbers were taken into the helicopter one at a time by a hoist technician who was lowered down to a ledge and then safely unclipped their harnesses and attached them to NSR’s tether.

“Everything went very smoothly thanks to the skill of the pilot and the training of our people,” he said.

That rescue finished around 3 a.m.

The search manager said it’s not typical to get four calls in one night, but not unheard of.

Overall, he said the busy night went very well.

“Talon had the night vision helicopter available with hoist capability, and we had a flight team with the training to make it happen,” Barnett said. “The outcome, while it was safe for all of them, could have been very different.”

He added that the successful rescues were helped by the fact all the nature-goers were travelling with friends, could communicate and had the right equipment.

“Always be prepared, not for what you’re planning on happening but what could happen,” he said. “They were prepared and that resulted in their good outcomes.”