It was a quiet end to an otherwise chaotic summer for North Shore Rescue.
Team leader Mike Danks said bad weather was likely the reason for their emergency dispatch pagers staying unusually quiet over the Labour Day long weekend.
Still, volunteers carried out one medical rescue on Dog Mountain when the weather warmed up. The team was choppered in to the popular trail off Mount Seymour just after 1:15 p.m. Sunday when a woman in her 20s sustained a likely ACL tear in her knee.
“The only big hazard was that there were so many people up on the peak of Dog Mountain that it took a little while to get everybody to move back to get the aircraft in safely,” he said.
The all-volunteer team is now looking to recalibrate following an exhausting 97 call-outs so far this year.
Going forward, North Shore Rescue may deploy fewer search managers per call.
“We have been very busy and we’re going to be a bit more strategic about how many people we’re putting into the field now,” Danks said. “Because we’ve had so many calls, there is the potential for people to not be available because they’re getting burnt out and they’re getting flak from their families, if you will.”
Last year’s record-breaking 139 call-outs raised questions over whether NSR can continue operating at that level with their limited volunteer base while training and raising funds.
Because the team sits on the edge of a major media market, it tends to get more attention than B.C.’s other search and rescue teams, all of which find themselves busy, Danks said.
“It raises a lot of discussion of if this is a sustainable model moving forward,” he said. “It’s not just our team that’s busy. It’s a lot of other teams in the southwest here that are extremely busy this year. We’re all in the same situation with a challenge in sustainable funding moving forward.”
The B.C. Search and Rescue Association, which represents teams from around B.C., is in talks with the province over a possible change to how rescues are funded. In the last year, the province committed $10 million to an education campaign called AdventureSmart, which posts outreach workers at popular trailheads to provide some possibly life-saving advice to hikers, many of whom are unprepared.
It’s hard to know how many rescue calls that program prevented, Danks said, as overall traffic on the trails continues to climb.
“We have so many people that are getting into the backcountry. I believe it’s increasing on a yearly basis. Do we see a direct correlation between the AdventureSmart program and our call volume? Not currently, but over time, I believe that’s going to happen.”
As the team transitions into shoulder season, they’ll get back into training, which they largely suspend during the summer months. On Sept. 11, North Shore Rescue is co-ordinating with its sister-teams from Lions Bay and Vancouver Island to search again for Neville Jewell, the 52-year-old Surrey man who disappeared somewhere on Hollyburn Mountain in September 2015.
On the plus side, a busy rescue season tends to be good for the team’s fundraising, which goes to cover equipment and training costs, Danks said.
On Saturday, Sept. 10 the North Shore’s three White Spot locations are hosting fundraisers to support the Tim Jones Legacy Fund. The family restaurant will be donating $1 from every burger and 25 cents from every Nat’s Pale Ale or Granville Island lager to the fund.
