It was a busy morning on the mountain for North Vancouver fire and rescue crews.
District of North Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services responded to two calls to assist people in distress on the Grouse Grind and BCMC Trail Saturday.
Shortly after 8 a.m. fire crews responded to a callout for a man in his late 40s/early 50s complaining of chest pains at the three-quarter mark of the Grouse Grind.
“Crews went up in the trams and they came from the top down and carried the patient back up to the top with the assist of BC Ambulance,” said Kit Little, assistant fire chief for the department.
After descending the mountain with the man, paramedics took him to the hospital to be checked out.
A few hours later, crews were called out to the nearby BCMC Trail where a man, also described as being in his late 40s/early 50s, had sustained a lower leg injury after slipping at around the bottom fifth of the trail. The man was carried out on a stretcher by a nine-person crew, which included park rangers, who delivered him to a waiting ambulance.
The 2.9-kilometre Grouse Grind trail, which offers an intense, upward climb up the mountainside with a staggering elevation gain of 2,800 feet, just opened for the season earlier this week.
With the weather getting better and people more eager to get outside, especially in the era of COVID-19, Little recommended taking proper precautions whenever heading out to the backcountry or doing some outdoor recreation.
“It’s getting quite busy again on the trails, a lot of people going up. It just opened and it’s a steady flow of people,” he said.
