An out-of-bounds snowboarder made it home safe Saturday thanks to efforts by Cypress Mountain ski patrol and North Shore Rescue.
North Shore Rescue volunteers got the call for help around 7:30 p.m., learning of a snowboarder who was in chest-deep snow after ducking under the wire on the west side of Hollyburn Mountain.
"Ideally, as soon as he knew he was in a difficult spot and lost, he should have stayed put and called 9-1-1. Instead, for several hours he was just trudging around in the snow and calling his friends and texting his friend using up valuable battery power on his phone," said Doug Pope, North Shore Rescue search manager.
When Pope spoke with the lost man, he was able to get the GP S coordinates off the subject's phone, which placed him in the Montizambert Creek drainage below the Howe Sound Crest Trail near the Bowen Lookout.
Cypress ski patrol members got into position above the drainage and coached the subject back up the mountain to safety.
Out-of-bounds adventurers often expect they can find their way back to a mountain's parking lot once they've gone into the backcountry, though that is a dangerous assumption, Pope said.
"On the North Shore Mountains, they all typically get really steep, the snow gets deep and a lot of them end in waterfalls and cliffs," Pope said.
"When you go out of bounds, it's life and death. You're endangering the lives of ski patrol and search and rescue personal that come and get you."
