District of North Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services members were tasked with trail rescues nine times over the course of the weekend — almost all of them at Deep Cove’s Quarry Rock and Baden Powell trails.
“It’s a really popular spot right now,” said assistant chief Jim Bonneville, noting one of the chiefs who lives in the neighbourhood frequently sees entire tour buses of hikers being dropped off.
One of Saturday’s calls was to conduct a high-angle rope rescue for a boy who had clambered down the cliff face but found himself stranded when the rope back to the top snapped.
“While they were there, the rescue leader on the scene told me it was just crazy. There must have been about 150 people watching,” he said. “We almost needed crowd control.”
The trail’s growing popularity means district firefighters are going to be spending more of their resources there, Bonneville said.
“You’ve got that volume of people and you’ve got the law of averages,” he said. “More people, more chances of injuries.”
Metro Vancouver, meanwhile, has hired two trail rangers to patrol the Grouse Grind. The trail draws hundreds of thousands of hikers per year — many of them who are poorly hydrated or not wearing the proper footwear for the strenuous hike and in need of rescue.
“We’re prepared to have a couple rangers on a trial basis this year to see whether we can reduce in some way injury and any health issues from people hiking up the Grind on our land,” said Bob Cavill, Metro Vancouver’s watershed division manager.
While they won’t be carrying injured hikers out, the rangers will be able to offer some first aid assistance and liaise with district firefighters and North Shore Rescue when more technical rescues are needed.
That will be an improvement on the current system, Bonneville said.
“That’s the biggest thing. That determines what kind of resources we’re going to commit and for how long,” he said.
North Shore Rescue too had a busy Sunday, being tasked before 7 a.m. to go out and search for a group of women who failed to return from a hike through the Hanes Valley Saturday night.
The women were well-prepared and experienced hikers but they got off route while attempting the highly technical rock climb at Widowmaker Arete. The group hunkered down for the night but their satellite communication device didn’t work when they tried to alert their families that they’d be spending the night in the bush, according to search manager Doug Pope. North Shore Rescue volunteers airlifted them back to civilization.
The Talon helicopter was out again in the afternoon to long-line rescue a woman who had broken her ankle on the route down from the summit of Mount Fromme.
North Shore Rescue typically faces 80 to 100 calls per year.
“We’re doing well but it is taxing for our team with this call volume that we have, for sure,” Pope said. “Education can go a long way in preventing a lot of the calls that we talk about.”
