A woman and her dog have been rescued from their precarious perch on a ledge in North Vancouver, some 10 metres down from where they fell, and a sheer drop of 30 metres to the water below.
Rescuers arrived at Quarry Rock shortly after 6 p.m. Wednesday, and one descended by rope to where the Carrie Whitworth and her black Labrador Levi were stranded.
"[Levi was a bit overexcited and bounded over the edge and kept going," recalled Whitworth shortly afterwards.
"I thought I could jump down," she added. "But once I got down there it was, way too steep to get him back up."
Several of the woman's friends were watching with their own dogs from above as the rescue worker strapped webbing around the dog and then secured the woman in a harness of her own.
For several suspenseful minutes -- including some fast footwork on the part of the rescuer -- the trio ascended slowly just before 6:30 p.m.
"I was so grateful for them -- amazing," said Whitworth. "I was just overwhelmed when I got to the top and saw so many people involved, and they're all so humbly cleaning up their equipment.
"Here we are, one person and one dog and they came and helped us. I'm just so grateful for their help," she said.
Several years ago, a boy and his dog were trapped on the very same cliff as the summer warmed up.
In 2006, Coadey Bohnert was stranded with his dog on a steep, rocky cliff for more than an hour, three meters below the ledge on the same rock.
He was hiking with his Big Brother, Kevin Copil, when Copil's dog Kaos slipped off the edge of the rocky cliff.
Bohnert climbed down to save the dog and then found himself stuck on the narrow ledge, approximately three meters below the edge.
"I went down there to save him, but I couldn't, because he kept biting my fingers. So I couldn't get back up," Bohnert told CTV British Columbia at the time.
Bohnert's rescue unfolded live on CTV News that night, as a CTV helicopter recorded the 45-minute rescue operation of Bohnert and Kaos.
And a year before that, Travis Stevenson got stuck on the exact same ledge last summer trying to get his dog back when it too slipped off the ledge.
According to fire officials, such a rescue happens a few times a summer. But officials can't place signs on Quarry Rock itself, because the signs are on private property.
