With only a handful of call-outs, it was an unusually quiet long weekend for the North Shore’s rescue agencies.
Members of North Shore Rescue and District of North Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services are cautiously hoping it means their public safety awareness campaigns are finally hitting home.
District firefighters had two calls for water rescues in Lynn Canyon over the weekend, both involving young men who suffered injuries while cliff jumping.
Park rangers radioed for help on Saturday afternoon when they spotted a man in distress, after suffering an apparent injury in a cliff jump at Twin Falls.
“This individual was in an extreme amount of pain. He was on the rocks in the middle of Lynn Creek, just below the Twin Falls area and was unable to make his way to shore,” said assistant fire chief Brian Hutchinson.
Firefighters launched an inflatable boat into the creek and loaded the injured man, who Hutchinson said was in his late teens or early 20s, onto a spine board so rescuers could haul him back up to the trail and hand him over to waiting paramedics.
District firefighters were back at Lynn Canyon again on Sunday afternoon, for a strikingly similar call, again involving a young man with a shoulder injury.
“That’s not unusual. Jumping from that type of a height, arms outstretched, these injuries aren’t that uncommon,” Hutchinson said. “We set up a technical rescue off the suspension bridge. We lowered one of our rescuers down to the (man). We put him in a harness and we raised him back up to the bridge and we handed him back over to B.C. Ambulance.”
North Shore Rescue volunteers spent more time waiting by the phone than rescuing lost hikers, something that caught the team off-guard. On Monday afternoon, the team long-lined a 40-year-old North Shore man to safety after he got off trail coming back from Crown Mountain, and wound up treacherous terrain.
“It’s incredibly steep. He was very, very lucky,” said Mike Danks, North Shore Rescue team leader. “He had no choice but to go back up until he got a cell signal and that’s where he made the call for help and he stayed put where he was, which was a good call. If he had had continued down on that west face, it could have been days before we found him.”
With only one rescue call during the long weekend, volunteers found themselves oddly over-staffed.
The team is on pace to set a new record for rescue calls in 2016.
“Last year we had 10 calls on the August long weekend and this year we had one. We had crews in place, people who stayed home for the long weekend. They didn’t go away with their families. . . . And then they didn’t get any calls,” Danks said with a laugh. “It’s kind of the way it goes.”
Both Danks and Hutchinson were optimistic the quiet weekend is because hikers and swimmers are learning from the well-publicized mistakes of others.
“Our message has always been, if people are going to enjoy the North Shore, it’s a beautiful place to spend time . . . but be prepared. Know the hazards. Know where you’re going,” Hutchinson said. “I think some of that message is resonating with people and people are taking more caution when they’re heading out into the (trails) on the North Shore.”
Danks too is hopeful that a public safety media blitz before the long weekend led people to make better choices before venturing into the backcountry.
“To be honest, I’d sure like to think that people are getting the message,” he said. “Let’s hope the combined efforts of North Shore Rescue, and (the media) and Adventure Smart are really starting to pay off.”
