North Shore Rescue volunteers were kept busy over the Canada Day long weekend responding to calls from injured and lost hikers.
One of the more serious calls involved a man who had fallen and hit his head near Norvan Falls and was losing consciousness.
Another involved plucking a woman from a rock ledge where she was stranded, clinging to a root, on Grouse Mountain.
Team leader Mike Danks said a call to assist came in Sunday at noon from Lions Bay Search and Rescue who were attending to a hiker who had slid a few hundred metres down a slope on the west Lion, resulting in a fracture that included “exposed bone.” North Shore Rescue sent in a team, including a volunteer doctor, with a 200-foot longline by helicopter to pull the patient out and deliver him to a waiting ambulance in Lions Bay.
Right after, the team got a call about a hiker who had fallen and broken his wrist and hit his head, near Norvan Falls, and was now fading in an out of consciousness.
Danks said there was no cell phone signal in the spot where the man fell, but luckily another hiker passed by who had a satellite-enabled device able to send simple texts. “We had limited one-way information that was coming in,” said Danks.
Based on that, a team of NSR volunteers, including the doctor, was dropped by helicopter then hiked 30 minutes in to the injured hiker.
The 55-year-old man was taken by helicopter to a waiting ambulance at Inter River Park. By Tuesday morning, he was listed in stable condition, said Danks.
On Monday, the team was again called out to rescue hikers – this time two women who had found themselves stranded in steep terrain on the front side of Grouse Mountain around 9 a.m.
Danks said the hikers were attempting to do the Bluff Trail that runs between the Grouse Grind and the BCMC Trail, but took a wrong turn – likely on to one of the many small animal paths that can be mistaken for trails, and ended up stuck on a steep rock ledge.
One of the hikers was “just holding on to a root” said Danks, unable to move up or down. Rescuers were able to reach the women, both in their 40s, and help them to walk out under their own steam.
One of the more lighthearted calls of the weekend came in when a group reported what they thought were whistle blasts of distress in the backcountry. But one of NSR’s search managers, who is also a biologist, was able to confirm that the sound they had heard was actually the call of a bird, a varied thrush.
