‘It’s still winter’: North Shore Rescue responds to first call of 2024, urges proper footwear

It only took a few minutes after midnight for North Shore Rescue’s first call of 2024 to come in.

Paul Markey with NSR says the province’s ambulance service called the rescue team after a New Year’s Eve hike on Mt. Seymour went wrong.

One person within a group of five had slipped and broken his leg — an accident that could have been avoided with proper hiking footwear, Markey says.

Markey says a 31-year-old male was running or jogging down a muddy ski slope when he jumped and landed awkwardly on his lower leg.

While he says the group was fairly well-equipped for their hike, some of them were lacking in the footwear department.

“I think they were actually wearing Blundstones,” he said. “Even though we’ve got very little snow on the mountains this year, the ground still freezes. The logs and rocks are still frozen. It’s pretty slippery up there.”

He says he recommended the group bring microspikes with them the next time they venture out into the mountains. While they’re very helpful for traction on snow and ice, they’re also beneficial on frozen ground, he adds.

Additionally, extra layers are also important to carry in case of an emergency. As sweat builds up during a hike, Markey says an extra layer or two stowed away in a backpack can really help in case you or another person in your group gets injured and you have to stop moving for any period of time.

“Imagine you’re out for a hike, you’re putting up a lot of energy, you’re working pretty hard and you’re sweating. You’re creating a lot of heat on your body. Now, if somebody gets injured, all of a sudden, you become immobile,” he said.

“People don’t realize that as soon as you start getting cold, you start cooling down pretty quickly.”

In this case, Markey says the hiking group made the smart decision to pull a covering from a nearby ski pole for their injured friend to sit on to insulate him from the ground.

The whole operation took a couple of hours, Markey says, and he was home by about 3:30 a.m. The rescue team was able to drive one of their four-wheel drive Jeeps up to the injured hiker due to the lack of snow on the mountain’s ski slopes.

“Last night, with there being almost no snow at the ski resort, it was kind of ideal that we could just drive a four-wheel-drive Jeep up the ski run and access the subject that way.”

With the milder temperatures, Markey says the rescue team’s calls have dipped slightly during what would be a typically busy time of year.

However, he says the snow is still coming and he expects the same trend of an increasing number of calls to carry through 2024.

“Even though there’s no snow, it’s still winter. So having some traction devices for your feet, I think that would have, more than likely, prevented this injury,” Markey said. “That’s the key thing here.”