The Australian tourist who died after a snowmobiling accident in Whistler, B.C. on New Year’s Day suffered a cardiac arrest, Mounties revealed Monday.
The RCMP said the 65-year-old was on a guided snowmobiling tour Friday night on Blackcomb Mountain when he somehow failed to make a turn and went over an embankment.
His guide found him in cardiac arrest and performed CPR, but the tourist did not survive. He was later pronounced dead at the Whistler Health Care Centre.
A 54-year-old woman, also from Australia, who was on back of the snowmobile during the crash suffered serious injuries and was taken to Lions Gate Hospital for treatment.
Canadian Wilderness Adventures, which runs the dinner snowmobiling tour, offered condolences to the deceased’s family and friends over the weekend.
“It’s been really devastating personally and for the staff, the people involved,” owner Allan Crawford told CTV News on Sunday. “It’s just a really, really sad story.”
Crawford said conditions were good at the time of the crash, and that the victim lost control of the snowmobile just minutes from the finish line.
“The client had made it up all the hard parts of the tour, and it was just in the last little home-stretch back to our base,” Crawford told CTV News Sunday
The vehicle was inspected just days before the incident, Crawford said, but the RCMP has seized it in order to conduct a proper mechanical examination of it as part of their investigation.
The BC Coroners Service is also investigating the incident.
With files from The Canadian Press
