North Shore Rescue members were led astray from a rescue attempt this week by a prank call.
NSR members were looking for an out-ofbounds snowboarder on Cypress Mountain Monday evening when 9-1-1 received a short, muffled call from someone sounding distressed.
Police traced the call to Cypress and NSR members spilt up to find the new caller. They later tracked down the phone's owner, a 15-year-old North Vancouver boy. "He's very apologetic. He's insisting he doesn't know who or how the call was made with his phone," said Const. Jeff Palmer, West Vancouver police spokesman. Regardless of who made the call, it was a bad idea, Palmer added. "You've already got volunteers that are out on the mountain, putting themselves in a situation of risk to locate one person and now we're diverting attention and resources from an in-progress search for somebody's dumb idea of a prank," he said.
The genuinely lost snowboarder made his way out on his own.
