18-year-old hiker airlifted from Vancouver Island mountain
Posted September 19, 2023 2:10 pm.
It was a busy Sunday evening for North Shore Rescue’s (NSR) aircrew, assisting in two operations across B.C.’s South Coast in a matter of hours.
Around 5 p.m., rescue crews helped find a lost hiker on Coliseum Mountain in the District of North Vancouver.
As crews were finishing up that rescue, they were called by their counterparts in the Alberni Valley on Vancouver Island to help extract an injured hiker.
NSR says an 18-year-old hiker had fallen off a small cliff and injured themselves, with a helicopter needed to rescue them. They say the hiker was located at about 3,000 feet of elevation near the peak of the mountain.
Rescue crews say poor weather grounded the helicopter for about 90 minutes before they were able to get to the area. A doctor and two hoist technicians were sent down to tend to the hiker.
Eventually, crews say the hiker was hoisted up by the 16-person crew and taken to a hospital in Nanaimo.
“We would like to recognize the outstanding work done by the ground teams, and command team on this call. This was a challenging rescue necessitating the coordination of many different resources,” NSR said in an online post.
