If you can’t handle the heat, stay out of the mountains.
That’s the message from North Shore Rescue members, who had their hands full this weekend while the mercury pushed past 30 degrees Celsius and some hikers found themselves in peril.
“It was a bit of a frenzy,” said North Shore Rescue search manager Jeff Yarnold, who estimated half the calls were directly related to the hot temperatures.
The busy rescue weekend kicked off Friday night with a “significant call” to save a hiker who got stuck on a steep cliff while descending the west Lion.
“It’s vertical terrain there, so when you’re off-route it gets serious pretty quickly,” described Yarnold. “Luckily he dropped his backpack and watched his backpack fall about 300 or 400 feet. And that was enough for him to decide that he should stay put where he was.”
NSR came in to assist Lions Bay Search and Rescue and long-lined the hiker to solid ground just before dark on Friday.
The next day a cluster of calls came in for NSR around mid-afternoon, starting with a distress signal from a beacon at the back of Hanes Valley. With no details of the emergency, other than GPS co-ordinates, North Shore Rescue volunteers set out for the backcountry.
Two members were dropped from the Talon helicopter in a remote area of the Hanes Valley to try and locate the subject. In the end, the hiker had made his way back to the Lynn Headwaters trailhead.
Simultaneous to the Hanes Valley call, NSR received word of a hiker near the summit of Dog Mountain in medical distress. “She was vomiting and dizzy and unable to walk,” said Yarnold.
Two rescue teams were deployed to reach the woman on Mount Seymour who was suffering from suspected heat exhaustion and dehydration. The helicopter was called in for a long-line mission that saw the ailing hiker flown to NSR’s Bone Creek station and handed off to waiting paramedics.
The Talon then flew back to Hanes Valley to airlift a hiker immobilized by a knee injury down the mountain as darkness fell on Saturday.
Sunday’s rescue lineup started mid-afternoon with a call from a pair of hikers stranded on Crown Mountain, just below the summit. At first, NSR hesitated to send a helicopter.
“We try and give some tough love here too, right?” said Yarnold. “We don’t like people just calling saying: ‘Hey, we’re tired, we need to get a pickup.’”
One of the two hikers, described as two muscular men in their late 20s, was exhibiting hallmark signs of heat exhaustion and dehydration: nausea, dizziness and leg cramps.
“You could tell he wasn’t in good shape. He was shaking. He was so weak he couldn’t stand up,” said Yarnold.
The call was made to extricate the heat-exhausted hikers from the mountain.
“This is when I learned they had actually come up the Grind earlier,” said Yarnold. “They did bite off more than they could chew.”
At the same time on Sunday, NSR was called out to Mount Seymour, near Elsay Lake, where a group of hikers were stuck with a 100-pound dog that was struggling in the heat.
“That’s a real tough one for us,” explained Yarnold. “We are only tasked by the province to help if the hikers need help.”
While the group managed to get Fido down the mountain on their own, one of the female hikers may have injured her back trying to lift the dog to carry it, according to Yarnold.
Looking back on the weekend as a whole, Yarnold said the message for hikers is to be prepared for the elements and pack extra water and electrolytes.
“You can’t just go and pick off one of these big hikes when it’s 30 degrees out, when you’ve been on the couch,” said Yarnold. “You just have to have a realistic objective for your fitness level.”
