A 28-year-old Delta man has died after a fall in the North Shore mountains.
It’s the first fatality of the year in the backcountry.
North Shore Rescue members were in the midst of responding to a call for two lost hikers on Crown Mountain around 6:15 p.m. Sunday when a more urgent call reporting an “unconscious collapse” came in from the BC Emergency Coordination Centre.
The man had slipped and hit his head while crossing a shallow section of Norvan Creek, deep in Lynn Headwaters Regional Park.
“He was unconscious and they weren’t able to wake him. Because they were in Lynn Headwaters, there’s no cell signal there. One guy had to run out seven kilometres before he got a signal to call for help,” Danks said.
The team scrambled two Talon helicopters but rescuers still had very little information to go on.
When they tracked down location, they found the subject still partially submerged in Norvan Creek, where two groups of strangers had taken turns doing compressions on him for more than an hour and a half.,
“These people did an amazing job,” Danks said.
With an advanced life support paramedic on the rescue team, members rigged the man, who was not showing any vital signs, to recently donated oxylator and autopulse machines and flew him to a waiting ambulance. He was later pronounced dead at hospital.
“He basically slipped and hit his head significantly enough that it knocked him out. That was probably the catalyst that forced him into cardiac arrest,” Danks said. “This was just a really freak accident, to be honest.”
The incident underscores how satellite phones can be vital in a backcountry emergency, Danks said.
BC Coroners Service is now investigating the death. The name of the deceased has not yet been released.
Meanwhile, on Crown Mountain, rescuers were in search of two “completely unprepared” and “just incredibly naïve,” hikers who had become stranded on a snow slope, Danks said.
“They were wearing running shoes. They had no micro-spikes. They had no ice axe. They had a very small backpack with really nothing in it. They were hypothermic and they were in terrain that was over their heads, if you will,” he said.
With only 10 minutes of light left, the team opted to airlift the ill-prepared misadventurers out but Danks said he was tempted to escort them out under their own steam to teach them a lesson and to serve as a warning for others.
“If we had more time, we would have flown in and brought them proper boots and micro-spikes and marched them out because that’s what these people need to do. They need to understand they made a mistake. I hate to say it but they got themselves into this situation and they need to get themselves out of it,” he said. “I just want to get the message out. When you call for help, it’s not a free ride in the (helicopter). We are going to do everything in our power to march those people back out.”
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