NSR goes ‘old school’ in life-saving search for hiker on Mt. Seymour

North Shore Rescue (NSR) says a life-saving search turned “old school” after receiving a call about a missing hiker whose cell phone was dead.

Allan McMordie says the hiker is lucky to be alive after a particularly treacherous combination of factors came into play Sunday night.

The individual had rendezvoused with a group he met online to watch the sunset on top of Mount Seymour. But on his way down from Pump Peak, the individual got ahead of his three other group members and lost the trail.

The missing hiker also happened to be the driver, McMordie says, which prompted his group members to call 911 when they returned to the parking lot and realized their ride was missing.

“If his hiking group had all come up in their own cars, they would have just gone home and not thought of it because they got split up,” he added.

At 7:15 p.m., NSR was tasked with finding the missing individual, but unlike most search operations these days, the team could not “ping” his cell phone for a location.

The search team adds police could not obtain coordinates from cell towers and its night vision-equipped helicopter was grounded due to fog.

Instead, McMordie says the team had to rely on its “decades of search management experience” to navigate the snowy mountain in the dark.

“We know from years of experience if you don’t the trail right on the ridge, you’ll either go down to the west into Suicide Gully or go down to the east into DePencier Gully,” McMordie said.

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Rescuers ventured out on foot looking for boot prints and listening for any indications of a person nearby.

“We had to do this the old way where we hiked up on the trail and yelled out, made noise, and hope that he yelled back.”

Eventually, McMordie says teams found a fresh set of bootprints heading away from the well trafficked Pump Peak trail.

After hours of searching, McMordie says a couple of bear bangers set off by the rescue team prompted a response by the missing hiker who told rescuers he was in and out of consciousness.

Using a drone equipped with a thermal camera, the hiker’s exact location was determined, about 200 metres down in a creek gully.

“He had taken some nasty falls, was wet, had fallen in the creek and wasn’t doing so well,” McMordie said.

After warming him up and getting his muscles moving, McMordie says the team eventually returned the individual to the parking lot by 3:30 a.m.

Without voice contact, McMordie says he’s unsure if rescuers would have been able to locate the hiker.

“He could have succumbed to hypothermia and we wouldn’t have found him ever,” he said.

The operation serves as a reminder to anyone chasing sunsets or venturing out onto the mountains, to bring a light, dress warm, charge cell phones and wear microspikes.

He adds the mountain is frigid and icy right now, making for treacherous conditions in the dark.