A senior suffering from a heat-related illness, had to be rescued with a long-line from the Evans Peak trail in Golden Ears Provincial Park.
Ridge Meadows Search and Rescue were called to the medical rescue at around 7:30 p.m. on Friday, May 20, after a 60-year-old female suddenly became ill during her descent from Evans Peak.
About 10 members from Ridge Meadows responded to the call for help, made from a cell phone, along with about four members of the Coquitlam Search and Rescue group – a group who specializes in the Helicopter External Transport System, (HETS), rescue technique.
“As soon as we found out where the location of the subject was, – which was part way up Evans Peak – and given the nature of the medical situation and the time of day, we instituted a HETS recovery, that’s the helicopter long line recovery,” explained Rick Laing with the Ridge Meadows team.
However, he said, with the Coquitlam team being able to mobilize so fast, they were able to get the woman off the mountain to a waiting ambulance with only minutes of daylight left in the day.
“Everything timed just perfectly,” said Laing.
“Ambulance pulled up just as we long-lined the subject to West Canyon Command,” he said.
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The woman’s hiking partner and two hikers who stopped to help were then led to safety by a Search and Rescue ground team.
Laing said he doesn’t believe there would be any lingering snow along the section of trail where the hikers were located. But, he noted, the trail is steep.
Everybody was off the mountain by about 11 p.m., he added, with the Ridge Meadows team packing everything away by about 1 a.m.
Laing was also very thankful to the Coquitlam team.
“It was a very tight timeline that we had to extract this person from Evans. A delay of an extra five or 10 minutes even would have been an extremely long and ugly stretcher carry,” he said, adding that he heard the woman has since recovered from the incident and is doing well.
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