North Shore Rescue is voicing strong concern after rescuing an injured hiker Sunday who was left behind in the backcountry by her hiking companions.
Even worse, when rescue teams caught up with the rest of the hiking group, they were planning to leave the area and: “they had no intentions whatsoever of alerting authorities there could be a potential problem,” said Mike Danks, leader of North Shore Rescue.
Danks called that lack of concern “unacceptable,” adding it could potentially have had dire consequences.
North Shore Rescue was first called out by BC Ambulance around 7 p.m. Sunday evening about an injured hiker lost north of Norvan Falls on the trail to Coliseum Mountain. Details were sketchy, said Danks, both because the injured woman was unfamiliar with the area and because an English translator was needed to pass on information. Soon, however, rescuers got another call from an experienced hiker who had come across the woman and was able to stay with her and pass on accurate information about their location.
Because it was already too dark for helicopters to fly, search teams drove as far as possible into Lynn Headwaters then hiked a couple of hours to where the Good Samaritan was waiting with the 27-year-old Richmond woman, who had injured her ankle.
Meanwhile, other members of the search team soon came across the rest of the woman’s hiking group.
That’s when worrying details about the trip began to emerge.
Searchers learned the group had met through an online meetup app and had summited Coliseum earlier that afternoon. On the way back down, they split into two groups – a faster-paced group of three and a slower-paced group with a man and woman. It soon became apparent, however, that the man in the slower-paced pair had left the woman behind on the trail. Shortly after that was when she injured her ankle and became unable to walk.
More troubling, however, was that the group planned to leave the mountain without alerting authorities that anyone had been left behind or could be in trouble.
Danks said it was difficult to understand why, partly because of language barriers with the hikers.
But the move is a classic example of what not to do, he said.
“Coliseum and Haynes Valley, those are serious hikes,” he said, adding rescuers have searched for several hikers lost in that area whose bodies have still not been found.
“This is a big ‘what not to do.’”
Another hiker who had seen the group at the summit said in social media posts that the injured woman had been wearing only jeans and carrying a very light pack. “She looked very unprepared to be up there,” he said.
Danks credited the Good Samaritan who stayed with the woman for likely saving her life.
