Bad weather and dangerous conditions have forced North Shore Rescue members to pull back from their search for two snowshoers missing for five days in the backcountry.
Dozens of members have been scouring the gullies for Roy Tin Hou Lee, 43, and 64-year-old Chun Sek Lam since they were last seen north of Cypress Mountain on Christmas Day.
“(Search managers) started pulling them out about noon yesterday because it was getting quite ugly and they knew it was going to take a while to get them out,” said Const. Jeff Palmer, West Vancouver police spokesman. “They still believe there are some areas where, if there’s any kind of break in the weather, that they would like to go back into.”
The search effort has focused on Strachan Meadow, which has many steep gullies and drainages nearby. Search managers are monitoring the weather forecasts closely, Palmer said.
Since Wednesday, there have been blizzard-like conditions with about 50 centimetres of fresh snow. Avalanche Canada has issued a high-risk warning for anything above the treeline and alpine areas of the South Coast, including the North Shore Mountains.
“Some of the gullies that we’re looking at have had large avalanches that have gone down. We’re talking ones that would completely bury a truck and send it hurtling down the mountain,” said Mike Danks, North Shore Rescue team leader.
There was a brief hope on Tuesday afternoon when rescuers made fleeting voice contact with someone in the bush, but Danks said they believe that may have been some out-of-bounds skiers who made it out on their own.
Much to his dismay, a helicopter-mounted infrared camera picked up four more out-of-bounds snowboarders during the search on Wednesday morning, Danks said. The team airlifted another snowboarder from a creek drainage on Tuesday morning.
“This stuff is continuing to happen, even with us actively searching for people,” Danks said in disbelief. “We’re really hoping that Cypress staff will have a word with these guys. My understanding is, with all the rescues that we do where people are caught out of bounds, they’re having their passes revoked and they’re asked to not come back to the mountain. We agree with that because it puts a lot of people at risk when they do this stuff.”
Despite the awful conditions, the file is still considered an active missing persons case, Palmer said.
“Survivability is just so variable,” Palmer said. “They still believe there is a chance, depending entirely on what their circumstance might have been.”
West Vancouver police have been keeping in touch with the men’s families in Vancouver and in Hong Kong. The two were not well prepared for anything more than a short hike.
In December 2012, out-of-bounds snowboarder Sebastien Boucher was rescued after surviving three days in bone-chilling temperatures in nearby Montizambert Drainage.
Anyone who was hiking the Howe Sound Crest Trail on Christmas Day is asked to contact North Shore Rescue to help establish a timeline of where the men might have been.
