While most people are sticking close to home these days, occasional hikers are still needing to be fetched out of mountain gullies by North Shore Rescue.
Around 5 p.m. Thursday, two Vancouver men in their 60s found themselves lost on the side of Grouse Mountain and called 911. Based on their smartphone’s last ping off a cell tower, rescuers guessed they were in the Mosquito Creek canyon.
“That area is very steep. There's a whole slew of old trails and it's very confusing so it's not an area for inexperienced people due to the terrain and the difficulty with navigation,” said Doug Pope, search manager.
Pope dispatched two teams from the top of St. Mary’s Avenue and the Mountain Highway access road that winds up to the top of Grouse. Eventually they made voice contact with the subjects near a tributary of the creek.
“The creek wasn't safe to cross,” Pope said. “And they didn't feel like they could go back up the bank they had just stumbled down. So they were stuck.”
Rescuers used ropes to safely descend to where the exhausted men were, and then helped them back up to a waiting North Shore Rescue vehicle.
Making matters more challenging was having to abide by COVID-19 protocols, screening the subjects for possible exposures to the virus, keeping two metres apart from each other and making sure everyone was wearing personal protective equipment.
“We’re in the new world. We have to be very careful. Along with all the other hazards rescuers face, this is another thing to layer and we're doing our best to reduce that risk,” Pope said.
Because of the pandemic, North Shore Rescue has been asking hikers to keep to low-risk trails that are close to civilization, and only if you are well prepared.
The men pulled out of the Mosquito Creek drainage had good footwear but, ironically, they had packed in too many other supplies, which were weighing them down.
With spotty to non-existent cell coverage, they probably should have left the folding camping chair at home and brought a personal locator beacon or satellite phone instead, Pope said.
“They were lucky to even get any kind of call for help out,” he said.
With the warm weather arriving over the last week, the B.C. Search and Rescue Association has reported a 35 per cent increase in incidents compared to the same period last year. Things have been mostly quiet for North Shore Rescue volunteers since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Pope said, but the team is bracing for a high call volume when the province reopens Cypress and Seymour provincial parks.
“We expect them to be very busy when they do open and we want to be prepared,” he said.
