Two hikers were taken to hospital on Canada Day after being hit by a falling tree in the forest on the edge of Mount Seymour.
District of North Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services received a 9-1-1 call just after 1:30 p.m. after a group of hikers witnessed the incident at the Twin Bridges crossing of Seymour Creek on Fisherman's Trail.
"It was a dead tree. It was rotten and, for whatever reason, it snapped off in half and ended up falling on these two individuals," said assistant fire chief Jason DeRoy.
The victims, both men in their mid-40s, were reading a map posted at the edge of the trail when the they were hit by the roughly eight-metre section of tree.
"Both suffered injuries but one more severe than the other," DeRoy said, noting one of the men was taken out on a spine board. "He was pretty sore. He had taken the brunt of the hit from the tree so paramedics decided to do a full package just as a precaution in case there was head or neck injuries."
The other man suffered a leg injury. It was the third trail rescue call firefighters and B.C. Ambulance Service paramedics responded to in a short time. An hour earlier, crews assisted a mountain biker who endoed over the bars and cracked his ribs while on the Forever After Trail.
Shortly after that, crews picked up a woman in Deep Cove who had rolled her ankle, luckily, only about three minutes into her hike, making it an easy transfer back to a waiting ambulance.
