On mountains, in canyons and along shorelines, it was a busy summer weekend for rescue crews across the North Shore.
West Vancouver Fire and Rescue were called out twice on Friday (June 25), starting with a person who injured an ankle in Cypress Falls Park. It was a quick grab-and-go with crews having the patient out via stretcher in just 36 minutes. That evening, though, around 8 p.m., a more substantial effort was required to rescue a person who fell off steep rocks in Lighthouse Park. That required a rope rescue team to reach the subject and the Canadian Coast Guard’s hovercraft to transport them from the scene, according to assistant fire chief Jeremy Calder.
North Shore Rescue was also out Friday afternoon searching for a hiker who became lost east of Mount Seymour’s Mystery Peak.
Despite the sweltering heat at sea level, there are still winter conditions at higher elevations and anyone venturing to mountain peaks needs to be equipped with proper footwear, including microspikes. When rescue volunteers found the man, they gave him water, dry clothes and proper gear to hike him back to safety.
As well, District of North Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services members were called numerous times, including for a motorcyclist who ditched his sport bike while travelling between 80 and 100 kilometres per hour around the final switchback of Mount Seymour Road, said acting assistant chief Dave Johnson.
Luckily, he had no spinal injuries but he reported difficulty breathing, so he was handed over to BC Ambulance Service paramedics.
On Sunday, DNV fire crews were tasked with carrying out a man from the seventh switchback of the Grouse Grind.
“Essentially had no food or water, he reported, for day and a half, and he was quite fatigued, and had heat exhaustion,”
While that was going on, park rangers called for a rescue of a 23-year-old swimmer who’d been swept over Twin Falls on Lynn Creek with two other friends.
“They had tried to get up on the area below the bridge and go to the next cliff jump but they got actually sucked in to the swirling water pool. The official name is The Abyss but it looks like a toilet bowl,” he said. [They] got sucked into that, pounded around there for a while and then they got pitched over the falls.”
Two of the friends made it to the east side of the shore but one drifted to the west side, where Johnson said he was too traumatized to get out of the canyon on his own. Johnson sent a rope rescue team to the man, who otherwise had only a minor ankle injury.
“We've just seen so many, over the years, young people die in the water,” he said. “There's stumps and rocks, and the undercurrents change every single year in the canyon and we just don't want anyone to get hurt anymore.”
Soon after, DNV crews were on their way to Whey-a-wichen (Cates Park) after a swimmer in his 70s had become swamped by waves far out from shore.
Johnson called in the Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue but it was a group of paddle boarders who saw that he was in distress and pulled him to safety.
“He just couldn't swim anymore and he did have some water into his lungs,” Johnson said. “I think it was fairly close for him. If those paddle boarders weren't there, it might have been worse for sure.”
