It was a crazy weekend for North Shore Rescue’s volunteers after mobilizing for four rescue missions, including one for a dog that tumbled over a cliff.
The team was first called out on Saturday afternoon for a report of a 20-year-old man who had been lost overnight somewhere on the Howe Sound Crest Trail, according to Doug Pope, search manager. He first alerted his parents he was lost the night before but his parents waited until the next day to call for help. North Shore Rescue started deploying volunteers along the trail, with little idea of where their missing subject was but, about an hour later, the man called to say some fellow hikers spotted him and helped him find his way to Porteau Cove.
The false alarm, however, made the team well positioned when a call came in around 4 p.m., from a man whose dog Nipsey had chased a chipmunk off the edge of St. Mark’s Summit and fallen 42 metres down the cliff.
NSR sent three members, who rappelled down to Nipsey, a pitbull cross, to haul him back up.
“He was definitely lucky. If he was a cat, he would have used up a few of his nine lives,” Pope said. “He wasn’t that worse for wear.”
Within Cypress Provincial Park dogs are supposed to be leashed and the team doesn’t recommend taking them into the backcountry, primarily out of fear of running into conflicts with wildlife like bears.
“In this case it was a chipmunk,” Pope said.
The members were back out Sunday afternoon scouring the Hanes Valley in search of a 51-year-old man who failed to return from a hike the day before.
When they eventually reached him by phone, the man claimed he was OK and on his way back to Grouse Mountain, but Pope said it was clear he had no idea where he even was. The team spotted him from a Talon helicopter on a precarious cliff ledge on the east side of Crown Mountain. They then longlined him back to civilization.
“He was tired and weak. He’d run out of food and water at least 12 hours before and was wandering around all night. He was very happy to be rescued,” Pope said. “He could have died up there. That was quite a serious call. He was lucky he had gotten high enough that all of a sudden his cellphone got signal.”
Before the day was out, the team was called back to Hanes Valley when an emergency GPS locator sent out an SOS call. When the volunteers arrived, they found a 39-year-old man who was too faint to even lift his feet. Making matters worse, he had his eight-year-old son in tow.
“He was a very cute kid and was pretty excited about the ordeal but it’s a pretty strenuous hike to be bringing an eight-year-old in the first place,” Pope said.
North Shore Rescue recommends everyone pack a GPS beacon when going into the backcountry as cellphones tend to lose signal and have their batteries die. The beacons start at about $160 and also require a subscription fee.
“Just having to use it once in your lifetime would be worth the subscription of $100 a year,” Pope said.
The team is on pace to have as many rescues as they did in their record-setting 2015, something that is starting to take a toll on the 30 active members, Pope said.
“Generally, morale is good. It’s such a good group of people but there are signs the team is just overworked and I’m concerned about moving into the heart of the summer here with the August long weekend, the availability of members and it being such a large load on the members that are here,” he said.
