It’s being called the hat trick by North Shore Rescue.
The volunteer team carried out three highly technical rescues from Crown Mountain in the North Shore backcountry in three days.
The drama started unfolding around 2 p.m. Saturday when B.C. Ambulance Service alerted the team to an injured hiker near the summit of Crown Mountain. Some North Shore Rescue members happened to be hiking on Grouse at the time and started making their way towards the Crown summit while search managers called in a helicopter. When they arrived they found a 61-year-old Richmond man who had slipped on a patch of snow and slid into a tree.
“He was on his way to a 1,000-foot drop and the last thing that saved him was that tree,” said Doug Pope, search manager. “He sustained an arm injury from hitting the tree but the tree saved his life.”
Two rescuers were lowered down via helicopter long-line to secure the patient and air lift him back to a waiting ambulance.
The rescue made for good conversation at the team’s annual Tim Jones Legacy Fund fundraiser at Seymour’s Pub Saturday night but team members would be called back to Crown twice more before the weekend was out. NSR received another call for help at 3 p.m. Sunday after another man in his 60s suffered a severe ankle injury in a fall about 300 metres below the Crown summit. A window in the low-hanging clouds and snow allowed the team in for a quick helicopter rescue for the man who would have been stuck otherwise, Pope said.
The team was pressed into service again at 9 p.m. Sunday when police alerted them to two backcountry adventurers who were overdue from an attempt to climb Crown’s northeast couloir.
Search managers didn’t have access to a helicopter capable of carrying out night searches so they sent two teams in on foot, one from Grouse Mountain and one through the Hanes Valley in Lynn Headwaters Regional Park.
The first team to arrive called out and got voice contact from the stranded climbers.
“They couldn’t go up any further. They were off route and stuck on this ledge about 100 metres below the summit. There wasn’t much our ground team could do in the dark, safely, to assist, but they were secure on the rock,” Pope said.
At first light Monday, North Shore Rescue members arranged for a Talon helicopter and long-line team to pluck the cold but uninjured hikers off the ledge, one at a time.
“It was about -5 C and the winds were gusting so they weren’t well prepared for spending the night out on the rock,” Pope said.
That area of the backcountry remains closed due to unsafe winter conditions but unusually warm temperatures at sea level have given people a false sense of safety in the backcountry, Pope said.
“I’ve been hiking that mountain for 30 years and I’ve never seen it that busy, even in the summertime. It was really busy and the majority of people weren’t prepared for the conditions. They were probably more appropriately dressed for a hot yoga class than technical mountain hike,” he said.
