North Shore Rescue members are continuing their search for two men missing in the backcountry since Christmas Day.
The team has called up more than two dozen volunteers and two helicopters to look for Roy Tin Hou Lee, 43, and 64-year-old Chun Sek Lam.
The search is focused on the Lembke Creek and Montizambert drainage area, not far from where the men were last seen at Strachan Meadow around 11 a.m. on Dec. 25. But conditions have gone from bad to worse since then.
“Unfortunately, the weather has really deteriorated today. It’s almost like a blizzard up there right now,” said Mike Danks, North Shore Rescue team leader. “As of right now, both aircraft are sitting at Cap Gate and they’re basically stuck there because of the clouds.”
Volunteers in the field are getting as close as they can to the many gullies and creek beds in the area but it’s not safe to send them down any “terrain traps.”
“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,” Danks said.
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.
“We’re making calls. We’re launching parachute flares and bear bangers, trying to make noise to see if we can get any reaction,” he said. “They haven’t had any luck whatsoever. They’ve gone all the way up and down that drainage and no voice contact.”
The team will soon have to decide how much longer they will keep up the search. A break in the weather could still be critical.
“We don’t plan on suspending the search and just calling it,” Danks said. “I think what we’ll do is scale down operations. That is yet to be determined. If we do get a break in the weather, that makes a big difference. We can put members into the field a lot more efficiently.”
Much to his dismay, the helicopter-mounted infrared camera picked up four more out-of-bounds snowboarders on Wednesday morning, Danks said.
“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.”
