A late-night search for a lost hiker on a North Shore mountain had a happy ending early Sunday morning.
North Shore Rescue received a call just before 11 p.m. Saturday from North Vancouver RCMP reporting an 18-year-old hiker trying to get down the BCMC Trail on Grouse Mountain.
“The hiker fell off the trail and he said it was too steep to walk back up, so he kept slipping down until it became so steep he stopped before a cliff,” said search manager Don Jardine. “He did quite a few slips and falls, he said, but there were no visible injuries, scrapes and cuts that I could see.”
BCMC Trail is almost three kilometres in length and has an elevation of 750 metres (2,460 feet) and is considered a challenging hike.
Jardine said the hiker made the emergency call with only 12 per cent battery remaining on his phone.
Once rescue crews arrived, they climbed up to the hiker with ropes and used a harness and helmet to lift him to safer ground and then hiked back down.
Volunteers were able to get the hiker to his mother, who was waiting in the parking lot, at around 3 a.m. Sunday.
However, the hiker had to leave one item behind – his phone.
“Just before we got to him, he dropped his phone and it was gone. It went over the cliff,” Jardine said, adding the man was lucky he hadn't lost his phone before calling for help.
The area where the hiker stopped is familiar to rescuers, Jardine said, with numerous rescues required there in the past.
Some of the “lessons learned” the search manager said are for hikers to bring headlamps to help stay on the trail.
“A lot of people are relying on their cell phones now for headlamps, lighting and communications, and that’s not a good idea,” Jardine said. “If you’re using your phone for a headlamp, and you drop it, now you have no communications and no light, and you wear your battery down.”
He also suggests bringing a spare battery and charging cable and putting your phone on airplane mode when losing cell service to conserve the battery.
The search manager also advises going on hikes with another person, to get out of a trail early to avoid pressure on trying to get back down and wearing proper footwear.
Abby Luciano is the Indigenous and civic affairs reporter for the North Shore News. This reporting beat is made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative.
https://bsky.app/profile/abbyluciano.bsky.social
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