A snowboarder from Ireland got an unwelcome taste of the Canadian wilderness Tuesday night when he went out of bounds at Cypress Bowl and wound up trapped for hours in a gully above Howe Sound.
The 30-year-old was riding with a group of friends near the mountains Sky Chair at about 4 p.m. when he and the others ducked under a boundary rope and descended the rugged eastern slopes. The victim soon got separated from the others, peeling off into the precipitously steep Montizambert Creek drainage. He continued down the gully until it became too dangerous to continue. Trapped, the boarder called his friends to tell them he was in trouble. The others alerted Cypress ski patrol, but the man lost cell contact before they could pin down his location.
With the light fading, the call was passed on to North Shore Rescue, who launched a search. The volunteer group sent ground teams into the area and called in a helicopter to scour the mountainside from the air while West Vancouver police tried unsuccessfully to nail down the mans co-ordinates by pinging his cellphone.
A little after 7 p.m., the lost boarder climbed to an area with cell coverage and managed to get a call out to rescuers. Using the mans description of his surroundings, they redirected the helicopter, which soon spotted him from the air.
The ground team reached him after dark, hiking him out of the area at about 10 p.m. The victim was cold but unhurt.
The incident left him badly rattled, said NSR team leader Tim Jones, who talked to the man by phone during the rescue.
This particular individual was very scared by his experience; he did not understand the heinous terrain he was in, said Jones. He said he thought he was going to die.
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