North Shore Rescue members say popular mountain trails are being overrun with people who aren’t prepared for the winter conditions they find at the top.
The team was called out late Sunday night to help a group of hikers back to safety when they became dehydrated, exhausted and stranded by slippery conditions.
They were part of a group of seven people in their 20s who came in from Surrey and planned to climb Black Mountain and be out by dinnertime. But the young hikers weren’t adequately equipped and ended up calling for a rescue around 10 p.m.
“It’s still winter up there,” said Doug Pope, search manager. “There's a lot of snow and it's kind of the last area to melt.”
West Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services members had already reached the group. One of the subjects was too exhausted to walk and two were becoming hypothermic. Some in the group were in shorts and running shoes.
Pope said he suspects people are being deceived by the balmy weather at sea level and cavalierly heading into areas that would normally require crampons and an ice axe to safely traverse.
When he went for a hike on Mount Seymour earlier in the day, Pope was dismayed at what he saw: “hundreds” of people hiking in running shoes or shorts, and not carrying any supplies.
“I would say about 75 per cent of the people I saw were obviously completely unprepared, so it's a vast majority of the people on the local mountains who are unprepared, which is startling and alarming, especially with us trying to get a message out for people to take extra precautions for us during COVID,” he said. “I tried to talk to as many groups as I could, but even that was kind of exhausting after a while.”
Falls on slippery terrain are the most common cause of injuries in the mountains this time of year, Pope said, so anyone going into the snow-covered trails needs proper hiking boots with crampons or microspikes, and hiking poles, at minimum.
